


How to be a Viking - a dragon lovestory

by LadyAmarra



Series: Dragon and Vikings!Verse [1]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: AU, Dragons, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-18
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-10-10 15:59:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAmarra/pseuds/LadyAmarra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tristan was the saddest excuse for a Viking to ever wander the northern hemisphere.  He got seasick, would rather read than train with his brothers; wouldn't even harm a fly, let alone another man and let's not even start on the one time he tried to follow into the family business as a hunter. It hadn't been pretty...But that's about to change forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Before...

**Author's Note:**

> A Jared!Viking/Jensen!Dragon AU, inspired by the trailer to "How to Train your dragon" and betaed by ruben_c83.

 

**BEFORE...**

 

Fourteen year old Tristan was the saddest excuse for a Viking to ever wander the northern hemisphere. He got seasick, would rather read than train with his brothers; wouldn't even harm a fly, let alone another man and let's not even start on the one time he tried to follow into the family business as a hunter. It hadn't been pretty.

He looked too young and too small for his age; just a kid with messy hair and baby fat instead of a young warrior like his brothers. When he tried to ride a horse it looked hilarious enough to entertain the entire village. His father, red with shame, had tried to find a place in the community for his youngest, not everyone could be a hunter or warrior, but his son just never seemed to be any good at anything even remotely useful.

Tristan's only refuge was in the local Smith's workshop where he spent most of his days reading over manuals and scrolls, learning how to read the foreign words and the blueprints. The Smith had collected the scrolls during his time spent at sea. In return for being allowed to spend his time with the Smith, Tristan helped out as best he could with work that needed to be done in the workshop. There was no need to be tall and handsome to stand in a workshop and keep the fires going, and the elderly man could used the help.

Jim the Beaver was old and burly, he had broken a leg and lost several of his teeth on the hunt for a Ulfheônar many years ago. He limped badly because the broken bones had never healed up right and didn't force young Tristan to be what he wasn't.

Young Tristan had a connection to the horses brought in for new shoes and he loved all animals. He would even feed the few birds staying over the winter and the workshop mice with crumbs and seeds but riding just wasn't his thing.

The spot as the Smith's help didn't spare young Tristan the mockery of his brothers and the village's other kids though, who were all strong and tall young warriors, or the strange looks from his own father. He tried, he really, really tried to be a good boy and worth something in the eyes of his father but the Goddesses of Destiny must have had a tremendously bad day when they created his thread of life. Or maybe they just had the same shitty sense of humor as his brothers who knocked him over the head and dropped him off somewhere in the hills.

He blinked away the snow falling into his eyes, looking up at the cloudy gray sky and contemplated how screwed he really was; shitty didn't do it justice. Night would come in just a few hours. He was tied up like a parcel of furs on its way to the market and he wore nothing more than his woolen underclothes. His skin was red, stung from the cold and his head hurt like someone had hit him with a club; which had been exactly what his brothers might have done before they undressed him and dropped him off.

He would die in just a few hours.

“This isn't funny!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Hey.... guys! Guys! Hello?!”

His brothers wouldn't leave him out in the wilderness to die, would they? They still were his brothers, right? On the other hand, Vikings had extremely bad humor. The type of humor that could be found in ripping the wings off of flies to watch them die cruelly or shooting at dragons with spears and laughing at the creature's attempts to take flight with broken wings. It was that kind of humor.

“Tir, Arnulf, guys... hello?!”

There was nothing though, not even the telltale chuckling of his stupid brothers hiding somewhere. He held his breath and listened closer but he couldn't hear anything but the faint howling of wind and his heart beating.

“Okay, great,” he yelled. “I give in, it was funny, you had your laughs...”

Still, no matter how much he yelled or begged, they didn't come back. The only creatures around at all were a few small gray mice, busy collecting seeds for the winter. One of them, tho one with a white spot on its side, was bouncing across the gravel stones with a twig in her mouth, headed right towards Tristan.

He'd seen her before, the one with the spot, when he had fed some of the little creatures in the back of the workshop. She hopped up to a rock by the side of his head and put the twig down, then watched him struggle for a while with big curios black eyes.

“I bet your brothers wouldn't do something like this to you, little spot.” Tristan muttered and pulled on his restrains. It was hopeless, the knots were just too tight. He let his head fall to the ground with a huff and closed his eyes.

“They'd do far worse,” the mouse said, her little nose twitching. “They would eat me.”

“Alright,” Tristan said looking around. “Who said that?”

“Me,” the mouse said and tilted her little head in the other direction. “Looks like you got a problem, friend.”

Tristan lifted his head and looked at the mouse. This was definitely the first sign of the icy death, absolutely. The mind went away first, causing the people to do stupid things.

“Yeah, I'm hearing a mouse talk,” he muttered. “I'm so dead.”

“Nah, not yet,” the mouse said amused. “It's not that long though, probably two hours. Maybe three.”

“Dead... dead, dead.” Tristan shook his head and looked back at the sky.

“Yes,” the mouse nodded.

Tristan sighed. “I've lost my mind. Next I will get tired and then I will fall asleep and die.”

“When you die,” the mouse said next. “Can we eat you?”

“What?”

“My family and I,” the mouse clarified, she took the little twig back into her mouth and hopped from the stone right on top of Tristan's shoulder. It tickled as the small creature walked over his arm and to his chest where it stopped and put the twig down again.

“You want to eat me?”

The mouses nodded and let her little pink ears twitch in the wind.

“I have a large family and they are always hungry,” the mouse said. “Many die in winter, it's hard to find food. You are a lot of food, all would survive.”

Tristan sighed again. His lungs hurt from the cool air, his fingers were numb and his feet had stopped hurting from the cold. All bad signs of the icy death. Beaver had told him once how men had sat down on the deck of their ship in a winter storm, tired after days of travel and how they had lost their mind and finally fallen asleep all blue and frozen forever.

Tristan would die the same way.

“Fine, sure,” he said peering a the mouse on top of him through his shaggy bangs. “Why not, it's not as if I'd need my body when I'm dead.”

“That's nice of you,” the mouse said and ducked her head almost coyly. “Real nice.”

“No problem,” Tristan mumbled.

He stared at the clouds again, watched how the milky sky beyond the clouds turned red and yellow with the upcoming night. He almost didn't notice how more of the tiny mice came out of their hiding spots and started to climb on top of him.

“Wait! Wait!” He struggled and wriggled at the amount of furry things crawling all over him. “You said when I'm dead! I'm not dead!”

The mouse still sat on his chest, and maybe Tristan was really hallucinating now, but she seemed to smile. So, not only Vikings had stupid humor, but mice too.

“I know,” the mouse said.

The little creatures covered him all over, rubbing against each other and producing warmth like a living mice blanket.

“What are you doing?”

“You're a good little man,” the mouse said. “You would give us food and make sure my family survives, not many would do that.”

It got warmer around him, all these little bodies kept him warm with their body heat and after a few minutes feeling returned to his fingers and feet in the form of little pricks of pain. He strained to lift his head to see if the mice had started to eat him already, it hurt enough, but all they had chewed on were the ropes he had been tied with.

“You deserve to survive,” the mouse said next and a choir of agreement came from hundreds of tiny mice throats.

Tristan didn't understand the rest of the words but the hum of all the little bodies felt wonderful. It calmed him down and took away the fear of the upcoming night just like the songs of his grandmother had.

In retrospect he figured it might have been some strange kind of magic that put him to sleep, a siren song or trickery. No matter what it was, it was what had made the mice help him, without them he wouldn't have survived.

When he woke the next morning the only mouse left was the one with the spot. She sat on top of the rock to his side, the little twig at her feet, and watched him with her large beady eyes.

“Morning,” Tristan slurred in greeting. He felt slow, tired and cold. The mice were gone now and his entire body ached as he tried to sit up.

“Good morning,” the mouse greeted him. Her nose twitched again and she sat up on her little hind legs to look at him better now that Tristan sat upright. “You have survived, that's good.”

“Yeah,” he said a little hoarse and wiped his hair out of his face with his hand. “Thank you for that.”

“We thank you,” the mouse answered. “You've promised us to feed my Family, but we aren't hungry yet, not today and not this year. We thank you for your promise though and one day you will feed us well.”

She pushed the twig towards him with her paws and sat back on her legs again.

“This is our gift to you,” she said.

Tristan reached out and picked up the twig to have a closer look. It was small, probably a part of one of the bushes growing all over the hills and had only five leaves left. As he turned it over one of the small green leaves broke off and drifted to the ground. It seemed almost as if the green leave withered on its way down, turned brown then black and vanished in a small cloud of dust that got carried away by the wind.

“It's a wish,” the mouse explained. “You wanted to survive, we helped you. That was the first. You make a wish and the leaf falls.”

“A wish, huh?” He turned the small twig over once more.

“You will feed us when we become hungry and you can wish for anything you want, it's our gift. Your heart must want it and it will happen. It's our gift for feeding us one day.”

Tristan looked at the twig. So, if he wished to be tall and strong, no longer a total failure as a Viking, would this fulfill his wish? Would his brothers respect him, would his father no longer think of him as a total failure? He wasn't sure. Beaver had once said that everything came with a cost; Beaver's survival had come at the cost of his leg and his teeth. Nothing ever was for free, and he wasn't sure what he had agreed to with this.

“I'm not sure...” he started but the mouse was long gone.

“Mouse?”

There was no sign of any of the furry little creatures, not anywhere as far as he could see.

For a while he sat there and wondered if he had just dreamed the whole thing. Speaking mice sounded a lot like something someone would dream. Eventually he got up and started wandering along the slope of the hill towards what he thought might be the old road leading to his village. Tristan's village sat, warped and a little crooked, on top of a cliff overlooking the milky blue Northern Ocean.

It was cold, wet and windy most of the times and the Viking ships at the base of the cliff were coated in a thin layer of salt or ice, most of the times both. Winters were endless and dark, hiding the houses and people away below tons of snow and trapping the ships temporarily in their harbor. The Summers were tepid at best and usually rather wet but at least the ships were free to travel the oceans and keep up the clan's reputation as fearless hunters. There was only one road leading to their village from the country side, looped and hidden in the valleys, and not much vegetation besides fir trees and crude bushes.

He wandered for a while and reached the village freezing and wet, but still alive.

People hadn't even searched for him, nobody. Not his father or his brothers. Not even Beaver. They all seemed to still be asleep as he came back, even the guards on the lookout at the edge of the cliff.

He stood there sure that nobody had ever cared for him, *would* ever care for him, and wished for nothing more than for that to change. He didn't know how or when, but as the twig fell out of his clothes as he hurriedly dressed with chattering teeth and half blind from falling tears, there were only three leaves left on it.

:::

**9 YEARS LATER**

Nine years past and the world changed.

The small fourteen year old boy had grown up over the years and turned into a tall, broad shouldered Smith with floppy hair, strong rectangular features and a blinding smile. Working with metal and cutting wood for the fire had helped to build up muscles and the strength coming with that had finally gotten him some semblance of respect in the village. He had grown tall enough that most had to look up at him and those few men around the village who still mocked him learned the hard way that Smiths could not only wield a hammer but work with their fists too.

He hadn't liked to beat his own brothers up but ever since they had left him alone in the hills where he had nearly died, he just didn't care quite as much as before. Not for them or their big mouths, anyway.

He had turned his love of animals into a useful gift as well, reading the horses people brought to him and what ailed them from the way they moved and sounded. Within just a few years people from other villages had started to bring their horses to him to find out what was wrong with them or they came to buy swords and tools from Beaver's shop that Tristan had made with his own two hands.

Maybe he still wasn't that much of a Viking, and not very high on the popularity list, but he had turned into a damn fine Smith and a respectable man. Or well, at least nobody tried to kill him anymore.

The girls liked him as well. He could have picked amongst the village girls if he would have wanted to, could have even wished for those who didn't like him on the twig still hidden away in a metal box under his bed but he never had.

Deep inside he still was the young boy, he still wouldn't hurt anyone who didn't deserve it and the way he had been ignored and hurt in the past had left its scars. He was a loner still and would rather watch how the birds and mice ate up the bread he offered up each winter than to watch the village girls dance. Although, admittedly, the mice he watched more or less anyway because he did not want them to eat him just yet.

The World had changed and Tristan right along with it and down in one corner of the workshop sat the little mouse with the spot on her fur and watched, hungrily smiling at how her plan started to unfold...

:::


	2. Now...

:::

**NOW...**

Tristan trailed a hand down the steed's forehead and towards the muzzle of the pitch-black horse, eyes closed and concentrating fully on the frequency of puffs of heated air that escaped the animal's nostrils. His other hand rested sprawled on the animals strong neck, feeling how the blood pumped below the fur and how its muscles flexed. He ignored the rainstorm outside and its drumming on the stable's roof.

It was subtle, barely audible, but he could hear the wrongness in the way the stallion breathed pretty clearly. There was a infection deep in the animal's airways, caused by the constant rain of the spring season and the pace the rider had forced the animal to hold up for far too long. It already sounded a lot better than just last week when the horse had arrived. A few more days and the owner could pick him up again and take him home.

“See, I told you it would get better with a little time,” he said and patted the animals neck softly. “A few more days and you'll be as good as new.”

He patted the horse's side once more and turned away to get the woolen cover for the animal's back. A few days and the steed would be back to normal, and maybe his owner would hold on to the suggestions Tristan made this time around.

He checked Beaver's two horses and scratched the dog resting at the stable's door behind his ears before locking up the door. He wandered through the Workshop and into their living room. This was part of a ritual he followed every evening; first he took care of the horses, then he checked the fire in the workshop one last time, then he went to his bed above the workshop and caught a few hours sleep before he got up again in the night to check on the fire. Sometimes when it was dark, almost the whole day in wintertime, he sat with Beaver and talked about some of the scrolls the old man had brought home over the years or worked on some of his own drafts and ideas.

Many of the scrolls talked about things that could be hunted, about dragons, the giants and the prophecies of the end of the world. Explained the most effective way to kill things. He wasn't a friend of the killing, never had taken a life with his own hands but he had seen his share of dead villagers and half eaten corpses when the hunters came back with what was left of their fallen comrades. Part of him could understand that his people needed to defend their lives while hunting. So he made swords and hooks, he mixed and fused the metals required to create knives and arrows to bring down all sorts of evil. The north had many evils when snow fell and the lack of sun in wintertime changed the world beyond the village into a surreal labyrinth of shadows and silvery surfaces.

Beaver had taken him in and shown how to work as a smith, and in return Tristan looked out for the man who was now more of a father for him than his real one had ever been. The old man had fallen asleep bowed over the table and his scrolls, probably too tired to go to bed himself. His leg had gotten worse and age had cost him a few more teeth and hair but he still was a damn know it all when it came down to what was written and would rather sleep slumped over than ask for help to get up.

Tristan smiled and ripped a piece off of the loaf of bread that stood in the center of the table, took a large bite and put the rest of the piece down at the usual spot by the door where he knew the mice would come in the night and eat it. He didn't think much about the spotted mouse or the twig, hadn't seen the little one with the spot in years but, safe was safe, right?

“It's time for bed old man,” he said and went to get the old man in bed next. Beaver jerked up at the touch but his reflexes were no longer as sharp or as fast as back in the day. His arms flailed out and the chair creaked below him dangerously, Tristan had to hold on to the other man's shoulder to keep him on the chair.

“I'm not old, you fool,” Beaver snapped, blinking blearily. He needed a moment to regain his balance then shook the helping hand off.

“Of course, you're not,” Tristan said smiling. The old man was still a proud hunter, forever would be. “Never said that you were.”

Beaver muttered a string of complains about ungrateful youngsters and giants that might have had an affair with Tristan's mother to create such a gigantic fool. He always felt a little better when he could complain while trying to get up and was only stopped from grumbling at the boy further by the sounds from outside. The dog over in the stables barked, people yelled gruff commands just outside their house and in the next moment someone banged his fists against the stable door hard enough to scare the horses.

“For the gods' sake,” Beaver muttered, shaking his head and pushing Tristan away. “Open the damn door already you fool, before he breaks it down!”

The knocking came again, causing the heavy wooden door to shake on its hinges. Whoever it was all but threw himself against the door by the time Tristan could unlock it.

“Open up Smith, we need chains!” The gruff voice of the man on the other side yelled and Tristan hurried to open the door for the nightly intruder.

It's was a foreign clan's hunter, his gray streaked beard long and clotted together from salt and what Tristan hoped was dirt. He smelled of sulfur, old blood and fried flesh as he shouldered open the door further and stomped inside the house past Tristan. He shook himself like a wet dog and wasted no time with formality or introduction.

“Where's the Smith, boy?” the man grunted, eying Tristan critically up and down. “We need chains.”

“I heard you man,” Tristan said. The smell was really bad, even for a sailor, and on closer inspection it wasn't just dirt in his beard but clotted blood that stunk disgustingly now that it got wet.

“And I am the smith,” he added.

“You?” The hunter eyed him from narrowed green eyes. “You're still a kid, just a baby boy, barely a toddler.” He laughed at Tristan's look. “Well, maybe a big toddler, but now in earnest, where's the real smith? The old bastard gone and died on me already?”

“I'm still alive and kicking Morgan,” Beaver muttered from the door that lead to the Workshop and smiled a toothless grin at the man. “He's my apprentice. Now, what do you want?”

“Didn't I say that before?” The man shook himself again, then smiled. “I just hope your work's better than your hearing.”

Beaver glared.

“You've got a damn big mouth on you,” he muttered. “You fucking know my work was good enough to save your neck a dozen times.”

The smelly hunter chuckled and Tristan couldn't help but think that the two men knew each other from old times.

“We've got a dragon on the ship, strong bastard,” Morgan said next and jerked his head towards the door behind him.

“You've got a live dragon on your ship? Really?” Tristan had heard of hunters killing dragons, even seen the armor plates and horns brought back from the hunt. The chief of their clan even owned a coat made from dragon wing leather, but bringing it along on a ship?

“No shit Smith-boy,” Morgan said amused. “The storm's forced us to land here, so we need to pack him up nice and tight before he starts ravaging your nice little village.”

“That's a damn stupid idea,” Beaver muttered and limped towards Morgan.

“Wasn't my idea,” Morgan muttered darkly, then cheered up and smiled again. “So, chains?”

Beaver looked expectantly towards the younger man still at the door.

“Tristan...”

“Yes, sure...”

A few minutes later they were out in the rain. Tristan shouldered one of the silvery chains he had made for the hunt, the hook dragging along behind him in the mud as he hurriedly followed Morgan and the other men. He tried his best to keep up with Morgan as the other man all but ran down the narrow path from the village towards the docks down at the base of the cliff with energy Tristan wouldn't have expected from they way he had looked. There was a tumult down at the water by the ships, and despite the rain, all were out and about., From old women to the youngest children. They were carrying torches and the men their swords and bows. Some of them just stood there and stared down at the ocean, others ran down with chains and hooks that belonged to their own hunting arsenal. Tristan wondered what type of dragon it was that would call up such a spectacle, then he heard it.

A fierce growl vibrated through the air, echoing deeply in his guts and drowning out the constant drumming of the rain. It was angry and scary in a way Tristan had never encountered before. He turned around the corner of the storage house and walked past the assembled men of his village towards the ships bobbing on the waves beyond.

The next growl was even louder but then stopped abruptly and with a pained yelp that let Tristan's hair stand on edge in sympathy. The creature was in pain, so much pain, he could feel it like a burn blistering up on his skin. Dragon or no dragon, no living breathing being deserved to feel such pain.

He came to a halt beside the the village Chief and a tall bearded man in the leathers of a Captain at sea and finally, finally saw the source of the awful screaming.

The water crashed against the ships and let them bob up and down, people tried to keep on their feet on deck and others tried to get on board or off without falling. Part of the movement came from the storm blowing in from the sea, the other from the dragon. He was large enough to easily cover half the foreign ship's deck, his head was tied to down beside the mast, and one hind leg and the better part of his tail hung over board and into the water. His body was covered in scales and larger armor plates along his back and flanks that sparkled gold and bronze where the light of the torches illuminated his form. He could imagine easily how he would have looked proudly diving through the clouds, how he would have been the king of the sky and master of the hunt, majestic and perfect.

Gods, he was beautiful.

And in pain. He looked folded up and bent in a painfully uncomfortable way, men were pulling on ropes and chains that seemed connected to his wings and body. Tristan thought it might have been the wings, now they looked broken and deformed, and dark liquid run from wounds all over his flanks and they had wrapped up his head. Others were trying to trap down his tail that swung around and easily swiped the barrels and empty grates off the pier.

“We've caught us a Gold-neck,” the bearded man said full of pride. “Shot him right down from the sky, but the monster's a strong bastard, cut right through most of our ropes and melted our chains...” he trailed off and shook his head. “Even after we had him in the water he still dragged us across the waves, sunk our sister ship and killed five men before we could get him on board.”

“A... Gold-neck?” Tristan whispered in awe. Yes, the name was fitting.

He was so beautiful, there was no other word for it, and that even now all cut up and broken.

“Smith boy?!”

Tristan's head snapped up and he saw Morgan standing by the side of the foreign ship, signaling for him to hurry before the dragon would get his act together and attack another time.

“Move your pretty ass smith boy,” he yelled and Tristan somehow came out of his shock and finally started to move.

He couldn't take his eyes off the dragon, though. Followed the ripple of muscle below the scales with a mix of fascination and wonder. The hunters and sailors had tied up the Dragon's head in chains and ropes so that only one of his eyes was still visible, he would have burned them all to crisps otherwise. Part of Tristan wished he would, so the creature could be free again.

The Dragon breathed deeply, his muscles rippling to collect the energy needed, then he curled his strong neck upwards and snapped the ropes holding him down like paper. For a endlessly long moment the dragon seemed to look straight towards him but Tristan couldn't be sure with the wind, rain and the chaos around him. The fire and the pain of dozens of cuts and wounds dimmed their light, but there was something inside the eyes that drew Tristan instantly towards it.

In the next moment all hel broke loose and half the sailors on deck threw themselves at the creature. The dragon's tail curled up and cut through the air, and if not for Morgan pushing Tristan out of the way, he would have gone over the side of the pier and into the water, too.

The world got fuzzy for a long, painful moment and Tristan wondered if that was how it felt to be dead but figured that it probably would hurt less. He came back to himself as the Gold-neck howled in pain, loud and pitifully. Chains Tristan had made with his own two hands got thrown over the creatures back and wings, a bone snapped loud enough to be heard over the rain letting the once beautiful wing crumble.

“Wait!” Tristan called out and tried to get up, but the pier was slippery from the rain and he didn't quiet manage to get his feet under him.

“You're hurting him, stop!”

“Snap out of it smith boy,” Morgan said and pulled him back on his feet by a hand full of clothes. “Gold-necks can lure you in. Make you do things.”

“Fool magic, Loki's work,” another man added. “They're the pets of Hel, children of the underworld.”

The Gold-neck whined low in his throat and Tristan couldn't help flinching at the sound.

“Go smith boy,” Morgan snarled. “Before you hurt yourself.” He shoved him roughly to the side and waved his hand towards the land.

“Go!”

He stumbled away from the ship and the dragon, drenched, bruised and unable to understand what about this beautiful creature could be so evil to deserve this.

 

:::


	3. PART III

 

:::

He didn't really remember how he got back to the house. There was the rain and the blur of voices and faces, hunters hurrying past and pushing him around for half the night. Tristan get the chains! Tristan get out of the way! Go! Go! Go! The howling of the dragon overlaid it all. It felt like the angry growls and whines had followed him all the way home and by the way the horses in the stable seemed uneasy and twitchy, he probably didn't imagine the inhuman sound still being there. At least not fully. On a certain level he could hear the dragon call out, feel the voice right down in the pit of his stomach where it coiled like a snake and made him want to go and free the dragon so badly.

He closed his eyes and combed his wet hair back from of his face with his hands. This was crazy. He balled his hands in his hair, pulled hard and took a few deep breathes to calm himself. He felt like the horses, all twitchy and jumpy.

“Stop pulling your hair like that or you're going to be as bald as me soon,” Beaver said gruffly. He stood in the door watching Tristan move around the stable between the horses stalls. The horses shook their heads and huffed wildly, going half crazy from whatever was going on outside. Or maybe just because of Tristan pacing around the stable like he was half crazy himself.

“What the Hel is going on with you kid?” Beaver shook his head, watching the horses pull on their ropes. “And stop with the pacing already, you make the horses nervous!”

“They have a Gold-neck,” Tristan said and went for the pitch black horse. He held his hands up in a placating gesture, hushing the horse with soft intelligible whispering. The steed's eyes were wide and panicked, its heart beating so hard and fast Tristan could feel its power as he finally managed to lay a hand on it.

“A Gold-neck?” Beaver snorted and scratched his beard. “Huh, that's impressive. They're pretty rare.”

“Hush...” Tristan whispered. The steed twitched and scratched with his hooves over the stable ground, ready to bolt. “It's alright, everything is alright.”

“I can't imagine what kind of fight that creature must have given them,” Beaver muttered impressed and sat down heavily on a bale of hey at the side of the door. “The hunt must have been fantastic.”

The old man spoke in the same voice he usually used to tell his fondest hunting stories with. He even looked on fondly, like he was imagining the ships cutting through the waves in a wild chase after one or the other sea monster. How spears, hooks and arrows took these things down, and how they were dragged on deck to take them apart.

“It's cruel, that's what it is.” Tristan growled. There was nothing good about this. “They hurt him, broke his wings and he had wounds all over,” he snapped.

He turned away from the horse and rubbed his hand through his hair once more. “Gods! If they have to hunt a dragon why can't they just kill him and make it quick. This is just cruel.”

Beaver shrugged. “Well, these beasts don't give us short and painless deaths. Do they?” He rubbed a hand along his messed up leg, eyes narrowed from the constant pain the uncooperative limb caused him. “And besides,” he continued. “He's more important alive, kid, at least until they are at their village.”

“How's that?” Tristan stood and watched the old smith. For a moment Tristan asked himself why he never had thought about wishing that for the old man, but then again, the limp and all the other scars were as much part of him as the workshop or his crooked smiles. This man had taken him in as the rest of the world still laughed at him, he recoiled at the thought of changing him.

“The heart of a Gold-neck is said to bring youth and immortality,” Beaver said still rubbing his leg. “Or as close to it as good old Thor let's us. I would give my soul to be young again, I tell you. Having my bones back, walking without you; the little shit trying to help me all the time...”

“To hunt and kill?” Tristan couldn't imagine the old smith wanting that. He had seen the old man sit over his scrolls and bargain for more of the manuscripts at markets, he was sure it never really had been the hunt for which Beaver had traveled.

“I don't think you do,” Tristan said quietly. “I wouldn't.”

“Well, boy, you're the exception to the rule,” Beaver chuckled bitterly. “These things kill people, to hunt them is our way of life, son.”

“I know, alright ,I know. But...” Tristan sighed and leaned against the door of one of the stalls. He reached out for the flank of the black horse, to calm it down further and put the woolen cover back in place.

Tristan sighed. “Look, I looked him in the eyes-”

“Never do that, they hold you in place with their eyes and devour your soul in one go.” Beaver stared at him worriedly. “Gold-necks are the children of Hel, the most powerful guards of Modgudr the warden of the golden bridge to the world of the dead. She asks for your name and your intentions, and sends you along to the place in the underworld you are supposed to go.”

“There is no cheating death, except with the heart of her own guards... that's why they are supposed to bring immortality, that's why Morgan's crew has caught him alive.” Beaver groaned as he tried to get on his legs again and Tristan moved over to help.

“Why is he even here?” He asked, reaching out to steady the old man, and got shrugged off for his efforts.

“Curiosity, searching for someone, cheating death. What do I know? Though, with a heart of a Gold-neck you can be pretty sure that it's going to end badly,” Beaver snapped, and pushed Tristan away from him. “And I think you should go to bed now, or at least get out of those wet clothes, before you get yourself sick.”

Tristan wandered into his room and kicked off his boots into a corner. He pulled the sodden shirt over his head and shimmied out of his wet pants before he sat down on his bed. Rain hammered away on the roof top like the hooves of a herd of horses and if he listened close enough, he could have sworn there still was the voice of the dragon above it all.

Fact was, the dragon, the creature that Tristan was sure carried no evil in his eyes whatsoever, would end up cut open for his heart. Tristan flopped back on his bed, staring at the dark ceiling above him. The Dragon had not deserved death and mutilation at the hands of power hungry hunters. Maybe the clan Morgan belonged to would make shining armors from the dragon skin, or insignia showing their chief's power, or they meant to get rich with selling the dragon's heart to the one offering the most. Maybe the King of one of the Northern Kingdoms would want the heart, maybe a merchant from the East? There was a multitude of awful possibilities, one worse than the other, and his brain wasted no time in providing him with details of how bad it could get. It turned his stomach.

He turned to his side and curled his arms up around his naked torso, closing his eyes. It was of no use, he couldn't really do anything at all for the creature, and maybe he shouldn't anyway. Still, part of him couldn't turn his mind away from the Gold-neck in the harbor or his voice on the wind.

He imagined how the gold and bronze of the scales must have looked in the sun. How the dragon spread his wings and blocked out the clouds and sky from view, how he stood easily tall enough that Tristan would be able to walk through below him without ducking, and how it would have been to climb on his back, hold on to the ridges of the dragon's armor and fly. He could see the flight with the dragon's eyes; across the lands and the oceans, beyond the horizon, and into the world of the dead. To the spider-leg columns of the golden bridge leading into the underworld and how the other Gold-necks, even larger than the one Tristan had seen on the ship, welcomed the dragon singing and cooing like birds.

He wished nothing more in the world than giving freedom back to the dragon.

If he would have been awake at this moment, he would have seen a glow below his bed light up the room, pulse once and die as quickly as it had come. In his dream however, he only saw the dragons play with each other, sun reflecting off their flanks and wings.

It was silent on the next morning. It had stopped raining and there was only the wind and the faint echo of the waves crashing on shore in the distance, some voices in the neighborhood, and the barking of a few dogs. A bluish strip of light crept across the wood floor of his room and he watched it turn brighter, his brain still fuzzy from sleep. He closed his eyes and let the afterimages of his dreams replay in his mind. The freedom of flying and the endless blue of the sky already started to fade and he tried to hold, contempt and unwilling to move.

The horn of the cliff guards startled him so badly, he nearly fell off the bed.

It sounded three times and by the time Tristan had hurriedly dressed into a dry shirt and pants, it sounded once more. There was a inhumanly loud scream and a crash, almost like an explosion, before silence returned. Yet again the village was in uproar, but this time it wasn't out of curiosity. The warriors stormed out of their houses, most still in armor and armed from the surprises of the previous night while women and children hurried back into the security of their crooked little houses. They closed the small windows and barricaded their doors, got the larger animals into the stables and the horses ready.

Nobody cared to tell the young smith what was going on but as he was halfway down to the docks at the base of the cliff, he could see exactly what was the reason for the chaos.

The foreign ship laid wrecked upon shore, the wooden body ripped open like a mutilated corpse with its innards falling out ,burned black from the dragon's fire. Smoke clouded half the area and people tried to carry corpses of fallen men away or fish them out of the water where they had fallen. The sail of their town's ship was burned to ashes along with part of the pier and docking area and a few unlucky souls that had kept guard on the ship seemed hurt as well.

How the hel could this have happened? Had the dragon even enough power left in him to get away like this. He saw Morgan climb up from the shore, cradling one arm to his chest. Half his face was puffy and red and the beard melted into clots and knots. He limped and held himself like he was really hurt, so Tristan hurried over to the older man.

“What happened,” Tristan asked him, reaching out to help. As so often with Beaver, Morgan shrugged the offered help off with a swat of his remaining good hand.

“The fucking beast tore the ropes, even your chains smith boy,” Morgan spat. He stumbled and Tristan grabbed for him again holding him on his legs by fists full of Morgan's clothes. “It cost the lives of half my crew, stop the touching, you girl, I don't need your help.”

There was a little voice in the back of his head that reminded Tristan of how he had more or less wanted the dragon to fly again last night. In one way or the other he had wanted him to be free. And maybe he had wanted these people to die too, subconsciously at least, he wasn't sure. And without another word he took off running up the path and through the town towards his house, past Beaver who stood irritatedly watching him at the table in the center of the living room, and up to his room. He crashed to his knees, half crawled under his bed and took the little box out he had made for the twig.

As predicted, one leaf was missing.

“Shit,” he growled.

Tristan hadn't wished for that. He hadn't wished for people to die,

Shit.

He had to do something. The only problem was that he had no idea what. He stood there in his room and stared at the twig for a few minutes, frowning hard. He could try to wish the hunters alive again, but that seemed somehow creepy and wrong, - besides, the other hunters would kill them for coming back from the dead which somehow negated the effect - or he could go out there and do his best to make sure there wouldn't be more deaths. He wasn't sure how he would do that, or if it was the right thing to do but he had to at least try. So, he pocketed his twig, got the coat he wore when walking longer distances in bad weather and hurried out of the door at least as fast as he had come.

He sneaked down the slope behind the last houses and went through the wooden gate after a group of riders as they hurried away towards the forests in the distance. On a normal day the guards at the wall gate would have probably asked why he left, but as on the day his brothers had left him alone in the wilderness, nobody really cared for him coming or leaving. He left the path after a while to avoid the riders and who else was out and about and started to head for the hills.

He still wasn't sure what he would do once he found the dragon but he figured if he survived that encounter, he would think of something once he had to. He wandered around for hours, avoided the riders whenever he heard them coming and strained his eyes and ears to hear something that could give away where the dragon had gone.

Part of him didn't want to find him, the rest was drawn to the gold-neck just as it had been down at the docks.

He stopped at a bubbling brook that came from the icy mountains far away at the horizon, leading towards a waterfall not far from the ocean. It was icy and carried a lot more water than usual after the heavy rain of the last days. Wind howled and clouds approached from over the ocean, heavy and dark with the promise of rain. He pulled his coat tighter around his frame and sighed. So far there hadn't been any sign of the dragon. Who was he kidding, he didn't even know what he should look for! Scorch marks? Paw prints? Hel, he had no idea.

He looked down and kicked a small stone into the water, frustration getting the better of him. It had been a stupid idea, one easily costing his life if he would have found the dragon, and he probably should count himself lucky he hadn't.

That was when he saw something below the water's surface. He carefully hopped across the stones in the brook and reached out for the sparkling little object, only to discover that the coin sized golden thing was a scale. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see several of them drifting in the stream. Finally a track to follow, he thought, and started following the sparkly trail.

He found a piece of translucent material, thin and soft as very fine linen, that hung from the branches of a bush and into the water just a few minutes up the brook. At closer observation it wasn't linen though, it looked rather like a piece of skin the poor creature had shed on its escape and he recoiled from it. He found more of the scales and a few smaller strips of skin leading away from the water and towards a small rocky ridge. He climbed it and peered across the top, determined to make as little noise as possible and there he was.

“Wow...” he whispered, then bit his tongue to keep from making further sounds.

The Gold-neck laid on his side in the shadow of the ridge, breathing shallowly and not moving at all. The gold of his armor and scales had lost some of its shine and the wounds on his flanks and wings looked even worse than before. For all Tristan knew, the thing had crawled here on his belly to die away from its captors. His resolve to make up for what wrong his wish had caused crumbled and instead he found himself needing to help him. Or at least, not let him die alone.

“Alright,” he whispered to himself. “Let's do this.”

He moved to cross the top of the ridge, determined now, but slipped on the loose ground and lost his footing for a moment. He flailed and fell, slithering down the ridge together with mud and smaller rocks. The dragon heard him, and in a last effort of defense lifted his head. He bared his teeth and snarled, wriggled to get somehow on his feet again but couldn't do more than prop himself up enough to face Tristan.

Tristan laid on his back in the direct fire-line and held up his hands, palms out to show he wasn't armed. “I don't want to hurt you!”

The dragon didn't believe him, not at all. He pulled back his lips further and opened his mouth as if he wanted to breath fire. Yellowish smoke puffed from the opened mouth and the smell of sulfur filled the air around them. Some people said you could hear the Valkyres singing when they approached warriors on the battlefield, and right now Tristan understood how you could mistake the rush of blood and the ringing in his ears for the high pitched voices of these virgins. Just, he wasn't a warrior and not on a battlefield, and certain that the warriors would never beg as shamelessly for their life as he was about to.

“Don't kill me, don't kill me,” he muttered and shielded his face with his arms. “I know you're not evil, I know you don't want to hurt people, you're only defending yourself! Please!”

The dragon was breathing hard, clouds of sulfur and heat gushing out of his nostrils, but he did not spit his deadly flames. Instead, he cocked his head and watched the human with large curios eyes that Tristan noticed were no longer the gold and fire of last night, but green as the grass on the hills with only a few sparkles of bronze left at the edges. He narrowed his eyes at Tristan and pulled his head back, clearly irritated by something.

Tristan, for his part, was just glad that he hadn't died and looked up. There was a moment of irritation on both sides, long enough for Tristan to get bold and start moving again. He got on his legs very slowly, still trying to look not menacing at all. Maybe the dragon was just too weak to do anything, or had decided Tristan wasn't a danger for him, and he fell back on his side with a heavy rasping breath. Horses didn't like lying down much. They always wanted to be ready to get away if danger was close, when they did lay down though, it usually was something bad, more often than not a sign that they were too weak and that they had accepted that much about themselves. The dragon looked just like that; ready to die.

“Hey,” Tristan whispered. “Hey, it's alright.” He slowly approached the dragon and this time he just watched but didn't even move his head to threaten the approaching human.

Tristan's hands were by no means small, not since a long time, but on the faded gold of the dragon's surprisingly smooth neck, it looked downright tiny. The heart of the creature beat faintly below the surface, probably weakened too much already, and the dragon didn't even twitch a Tristan reached it's head and knelled down by his side.

“I'm sorry they caught you,” he said softly and touched the dragon's muzzle like he would that of a horse. The scales here were tiny, soft, and almost white. The dragon's nostrils flared weakly and he blinked with his large eyes, clearly tired, but not leaving the human out of his sight.

“I'm really, really sorry.”

And he was. Here, right now, he knew that the creature had killed humans, had burned them alive, but it was not evil. It had done it to stay alive and had lost. It was quiet then, only the soft raspy breathing of the dragon and Tristan's own heartbeat. A few birds sung in the distance.

At last the dragon closed his eyes.

Tristan did, too. He kept on listening for the breathing to slow down, for the fluttering heart beat under his hand to turn slower and slower, and for the mythical creature under his hands to die, surprisingly it didn't. He opened his eyes again and watched the dragon rest, almost as if the creature had fallen asleep from exhaustion. And even with crooked wings, wounds and the dulled brilliance of his skin, he still was beautiful.

It started to rain again and thunder crackled across the sky, flashes danced over the dark clouds as he looked up.

There were other sounds as well, coming closer with every moment. His eyes flew wide as recognition came over him; hooves. Riders.

“Fuck,” he cursed. He had to get the dragon awake, get him to move, get him to escape, somehow.

“Wake up, wake up.”

He pushed and pulled but there was only a weak fluttering of the creature's eyes as if he dreamed, nothing else.

“Shit.”

He felt a heat in his breast pocket, intense and burning like a coal, and shrugged out of his coat to avoid being burned. He threw it to the ground and jumped away from it, but there was no fire and his shirt was alright. It dawned on him only then, after a long irritated moment spent staring at the coat, that his breast pocket had been where he had put the wishing twig and that the heat could only mean one thing.

He swirled around as a flash lit the stormy, dark sky above him and thunder growled loud like a dragon's roar above his head and found the dragon gone.

In his stead was a naked human now.

The human was pale and laid there with his arms and legs twisted uncomfortably. His short dark blond hair was dark with crusted blood and matted down from the rain. Tristan slowly approached the man and noticed his freckle peppered skin covered in bloody bruises and cuts. He had wished the dragon into a human? Hel.

He wished not for the first time the spotted mouse would have left better instructions about this whole wishing twig thing.

The riders called behind him somewhere, just on the other side of the ridge, and Tristan scrambled to get his coat and wrapped the smaller man up in it as fast as he could. He pulled him up into a sitting position and against his chest, cradling him protectively as the first riders came over the ridge. They had their swords raised and their arrows ready, came down in a flurry of gravel, rocks and armor towards where Tristan cowered on the ground, skidding to a halt just a few feet short of running him over.

The dragon turned human twitched in his arms and as he looked down he saw the green eyes fluttering open and closed.

“Alright, it's alright, I have you.” Tristan ducked his head and pressed his face against the dragon's hair for a moment. “It's alright.”

“Tristan, that you?” Arnulf sounded incredulous.

“Yes,” Tristan answered, looking up. “Yes, it's me.”

He looked into a mass of disbelieving faces. The assembled hunters shook their heads and muttered frustrated curses while their horses twitched and moved nervously around after the wild chase had come to such an abrupt end.

Arnulf slipped off his horse and stomped over to his younger brother, shaking his head. “What for Thor's sake are you doing out here? Do you want to get your stupid ass killed? And who's that?”

Tristan's heart beat fast and his hands twitched where they held on to the dragon. “I...” he trailed off, frantically searching for a good excuse. “I... he... brought a horse. We were to meet half way...” He looked down at the man in his arms.

“The horse shied and run away as it heard the dragon... and he fell down the ridge.” He looked up again. “We wanted to hide.”

“Hide, huh,” Arnulf huffed. He looked the stranger once over with narrowed eyes but didn't voice the questions clearly written in his eyes. Frankly, he didn't care. As far as Arnulf was concerned, Tristan was pretty sure about that much, he didn't care at all what the hel his younger brother did as long as he did it far away from him and with the decency to not get killed while doing it. Well, or at the very least, not die in an all too shameful way.

“That's more like you smith.” Another rider laughed. “Running and hiding.”

“Yes, yes,” Tristan said nodding.

“Yes, that's what we did.”

Arnulf spared him a last glance then rolled his eyes and turned away. He gestured for one of the younger hunters to come closer, shooting an annoyed look over his shoulder. “Get them back in town before the dragon comes back to eat them.”

“The dragon probably ate your horse, anyway.” A middle aged hunter snorted, and as so often in Tristan's youth, the hunters laughed on his expense and rode away ranting about smiths and women. He was used to it.

The young hunter meant to bring them back made a face like he was meant to do a woman's task, like cooking, or looking out for the very young and very stupid children, muttering curses all the way back to the town. Tristan ignored him mostly, fully fixated on two things; not falling off the horse and the sleeping man he held tightly in his arms.

:::


	4. PART IV

 

 

Beaver looked more than perplexed as Tristan returned carrying a young man he had never seen before. Even more so, as he saw how the young man was bruised, pale and passed out, wrapped in nothing but Tristan's coat.

“You want to tell me something?” He stepped aside as Tristan walked in, watching him with raised eyebrows how he carried the younger man up the wooden stairs that led to Tristan's bedroom. Beaver had barely limped half way towards the steps before young Tristan came back down, taking two steps at a time and nearly falling as he hit the floor running.

“I'll go and get the healer,” he announced and ran out again. Beaver sighed and chose to sit down and watch the show unfold.

Tristan scurried down the path toward the other end of the village, dodging horses and the occasional stray dog. The house of the Healer was crowded and many of the men that had been involved in the accident in the harbor that morning sat on benches or rested on cots as they were treated by some of the village women. The healer stood at the edge, hands bloody up to her wrists and with her blond hair back below a blood peppered bandana.

Tristan stopped, nearly running into one of the women helping a man with ugly blistering burns covering his arm and neck. It stunk like sulfur, piss and burned hair so badly he had to cover his nose while crossing the room.

The healer, Mary, or rather, Tristan's mother, cared for those sick and wounded ever since Tristan's father had brought her with him from a hunt in the south. She had once been the daughter of a Christian nobleman far down at the wall bordering the Emperor's territory, and had not even heard of hunters outside of bedtime stories. Her father had given her to Tristan's father out of thankfulness for rescuing him from possession. She had scars all over her back and side, Tristan knew from the times he had bathed together with her as a child, and he had always figured that the reason why she had never complained about being given as a token to a foreign man because the alternatives might not have been much better.

“Mother,” Tristan called out and stopped by her side.

She was busy patching up a deep cut on the arm of one of the foreign sailors, but looked up at her youngest son's call. She had always loved her children, every single one, and never once treated Tristan as badly as his brothers or father had.

“Tristan?” She looked him once over. “Are you hurt?”

Tristan smiled at her, shaking his head. “No, not me, but a friend of mine...” he trailed off. Well, not exactly a friend, but he couldn't say dragon, could he?

“Look, I was out to meet someone bringing a horse as the dragon appeared, we ran, but the man bringing the horse fell down a ridge.”

Mary looked him up and down once.

“I think he's hurt badly.” Tristan added.

“Alright,” Mary said. “Let me just finish this.”

Tristan waited nervously until his mother finished up the bandages on the sailor. She quickly spoke with one of the other women took a bundle of bandages and a bowl that she thrust at her son. By the time they arrived back at the Smith's house, Beaver still sat at the table, chewing slowly on a piece of dried fish. Neither Mother nor son spared him even the smallest glance as they headed straight for Tristan's chamber.

The dragon was a terrible sight. He was bruised, dirty and bloody, looking impossibly small and fragile on the bed. He still looked absurdly pretty though with the long lashes curling over his bruised and swollen cheek bones, his lips split and puffy. Tristan was so absorbed in the sight, he actually needed a few moments until he understood what his mother was telling him.

“Water, son,” Mary said, and Tristan hurried to comply, flushing because he felt somehow caught in the act of staring.

Tristan's mother knelt by the bed and trailed her hands down the bruised and scratched up torso of the out cold man... dragon... Tristan wasn't really sure what to call him yet, as he returned with the bowl full of fresh cool water. He definitely had anything a normal human man would have. The evidence was exposed as Mary pushed the coat her son had wrapped the stranger up in aside to exam a deep scratch cutting across the left hip and halfway down the thigh.

Tristan looked away, face hot and concentrated on holding out the water for his mother until she took the bowl and set it down.

Mary sighed and soaked a cloth in the water to start cleaning the young man up. “He is bruised up bad, and I do think he has internal damage that I can not help with.”

Tristan's look snapped back to the pale face of the dragon. Cold fear twisted his stomach up and guilt washed over him. What if the dragon was too hurt to survive as a human? All his wishes, all that Tristan had done would have been for nothing. And even worse than that, the dragon had not deserved to die, no matter if he had killed people or not. He had done it to survive, everyone was allowed to fight for his life.

“Will he get well again?” Tristan knelt down as he reached out and rested one of his large hands on the dragon's bruised shoulder. It felt warm and sweaty, and it was so damn pale in comparison to the tanned skin covering Tristan's hands.

Mary sat back on her heels, reached out and took a bandage from those she had brought with her. She watched with surprise how her youngest son seemed more than just compassionate for the other man's injuries. The look he showed on his face was something very different than the pained closed up facade she had seen on his face for so long.

“I can not tell,” she said. Sadly, in case of such injuries it was more or less in the hands of the gods. “We can keep the fever down with cooling his skin, can make sure he takes in some fluid, but other than that it's a matter of waiting and hoping the injury is not too severe.”

Tristan remembered how the dragon had looked, and how is golden flanks and wings had been covered in deep lacerations, it was a miracle the creature had survived the transformation. Now, it seemed unfair to have him die as a human.

Mary cleaned up the wounds and applied salve from a small earthen cup she had carried in a pouch at her belt, then added the bandages. Tristan remained at her side until all wounds were cleaned up and watched her work. The dragon did not even flinch, not once, even as the deepest cuts were treated.

Once finished Mary stood up, slow and sore from age and sitting too long on the bare ground. Mary could not do much more than pray to her god and those of her children to allow the young man to live now that all the herbs and tricks she knew had been applied. She rested her hand on her son's shoulder and squeezed once.

“You can't do much more than wait now,” she said softly. “If he turns worse call for me, I have to return to the others now.”

Tristan nodded and didn't move away. He watched the dragon for a while, even fell asleep that night, half bowed over his bed.

Over the following days he barely left the dragon out of his sight. He tended the fire in the workshop, worked a few hours on what was required from him, and even cared for Beaver in his usual way. He even was alright with taking in Morgan until he would be well again too, but his mind remained with the dragon.

The majority of the riders had returned on the evening of the first day, some had carried on to the neighbor villages to spread the word. In the eyes of Tristan's father and most of the other hunters, the dragon must have been too hurt to get very far in the air, and with enough man power the caves and hiding spots around could be searched through easier. Within a few days most of the villages along the coast had dispatched riders and trackers to find the dragon, or posted guards to alert the others should someone see it.

Tristan was meant to forge silver and iron hooks and chains to do his part, replace the shoes the horses had lost in the long days of tracking someone who was not there. Beaver kept the fire glowing golden day and night and Tristan did what he was supposed to, sure that the dragon wouldn't fall victim to what he created because the creature still rested in Tristan's very own bed, recovering from being turned into a human.

It was a slow process, and Tristan spent the hours he didn't work in the shop on the floor beside his bed, changing the dragon's bandages and talking with him. This had been Mary's idea. He was not sure if the dragon heard him, let alone understood him. Maybe it helped Tristan the most to talk, he didn't know.

He often sat with his back to the bed, arms leaned on his pulled up knees, and talked until he fell sideways from exhaustion. Tristan told him about his Father the hunter and how he had brought Tristan's mother with him from a hunt many, many years ago. How, for a very long time, their union had not been blessed with children. Not until the Gods had shown mercy and granted them three precious sons. Two skilled hunters and Tristan the Smith. Tristan spared the dragon how Tristan had pretty much been useless until his almost dwarfish body had grown up and stretched, and until the work as a smith had let him build up muscles and strength. Although the teasing from his brothers and the laughter about his antics in riding had never stopped, people came from the neighbor villages for his work and covered great distances to bring their most precious horses to him when they got ill.

It took a few days but eventually the fever went away and the color returned to the freckled face of the dragon. Still, sometimes at night, the dragon shook and whimpered. Tristan didn't know if dragons had nightmares, but humans did, so he held on the man's body to make sure he would not hurt himself more than he already was. It was one of these nights that the dragon stirred and finally opened his eyes.

:::

The dragon woke up with a start. There had been pain a moment ago, so much pain he was about to give up and follow the call of the underworld that all souls heard shortly before their corporeal forms gave out. He had been stupid to venture out into the world of the living and now he paid the price. Hunters had gotten him, had broken him and ripped him out of the sky. He would not see his brothers again, would not fly again, would not feel the wind under his wings again. He didn't even know where he would go when his body died, certainly not over the golden bridge.

Yes, he had given up because he couldn't go any further anymore, had wasted his last sudden flash of energy to get free from the boat the hunters had tied him to...and then there had been that floppy haired human.

Green eyes, gentle soul, freakishly tall and not half as angry as most of the other hunters the dragon had encountered in the world of the living.

He blinked his eyes open. The human had touched him and somehow the dragon had let him, had just decided to no longer care, and then things had changed. Not in the way the leaving of his body would have changed his perception of the world, but in a way that he could not explain.

There was a wooden ceiling above him now, candles stood somewhere to his right and threw shadows along the walls. It was night and he was in a room? Why the Hel... he tried to get out of there, get away from wherever they had locked him up this time, but his wings were gone and instead of his normal body he had human legs and hands.

And shit... everything hurt.

“Whhhh...” he growled. His new limbs were flailing and he hurt all over, especially his guts. Shit. He groaned and curled his uncooperative arms around his stomach, turning on his side. Breathing was hard and hurt, and his insides burned like a fire caught inside his stomach.

“It's alright,” Tristan said softly. The dragon felt hands on his new shoulders and could see the floppy haired human close to him. “Hush...” he whispered soothingly, but the dragon recoiled.

The dragon struggled against the touches and fought. He felt as defenseless as a newborn like this and the human was suddenly a giant. The dragon had not just been turned into a human, he had been turned into a small human. Into a small, defenseless hurt human that stood no chance against whoever would attack him. This was even worse than anything before!

“Hey, hey... you're safe, you're safe.” The human held on to the dragon, trying to stop the wriggling and struggling but careful to not agitate the dragon's wounds and bruises further.

The dragon might have been the youngest of his father's sons, but he was not weak. Even as a measly human he would be able to fight, he would rather die than stop fighting. Giving up had been wrong, had been stupid, it had been the mistake putting him into this situation, but he wouldn't do it again, he wouldn't give up again.... but gods, he hurt so much.

“Please, calm down, calm down,” Tristan pleaded. “You gonna hurt yourself more, shit.”

He pushed the dragon down in the bed, desperately trying to hold him in place. “Please,” he whispered and pressed his head to the forehead of the struggling dragon. “Just listen, listen.... I'm not gonna hurt you, please stop struggling.”

The dragon struggled once more before he settled for glaring murderously at the human towering above him. How could he even dare to manhandle a dragon around like that? Fucking human. Fucking stinking human. The dragon tried to put as much of his dislike for the human into his scrunched up expression, but the stupid human smiled at him blindingly bright in return.

“See, everything is alright. The hunters aren't here, it's just me.” The human radiated something that the dragon could not help but listen to, something calming him down, just like in the moment before things had shifted. Just like the last time the dragon could remember actually being a dragon.

“Wha....” he started but his human tongue felt sluggish and heavy. He was not good at talking like this. “What...”

“I... made you human.” Tristan ducked his head at the confusion in the dragon's eyes. “They hunted for you, they nearly killed you, I couldn't let that happen.”

The dragon heard what the human said, but couldn't understand the human at first. The question must have been visible in his eyes because the human looked to the side and pulled back a little.

“I wished you human, well not directly but somehow you became human...” The human sat up and let go of the now calm dragon. “I didn't know what else to do. They would have killed you, I couldn't... I couldn't.”

The dragon wanted to ask how or why. Wanted to know what kind of magic this had been? What god was behind this trickery? It felt like something Loki would have done, he was the kind of being to make fun like this. Or maybe it was one of the demons, or dwarfs, or whoever else felt like taking it out on the humans again – or on him. The gods were bored most of the time and turning to the mortals for their fun was all there was besides taking it out on each other.

The dragon closed his eyes and curled in on his side.

“You should have let me die...” he whispered

The dragon was a shame for his family, for the guardians and for his Mistress. A simple human, a warlock at best, had turned him into a human and now he was here curled up and hurting on a hay filled lumpy bed.

Gods, he wanted to die.

“I-I am Tristan.” The human said eventually. “Do you have a name?”

The dragon had a name, but he didn't see a reason why he should tell the human or warlock that. Jensen curled up tighter and rode the pain in his gut like the breezes over Hel.

Tristan waited patiently for an answer, but even after several minutes Jensen didn't talk. He settled down in his usual way, with his back to the bed and his arms leaned on his knees. Jensen hated Tristan for doing this, for just being there.

Jensen closed his eyes again and after a while sleep dragged him under. Against his best hopes though, his new form was not a nightmare. And the human.... Tristan... was not letting him have his peace either. Instead, he pestered him every couple of hours with human food and water and talked. And if the human wasn't talking he was watching Jensen carefully with an attention that made Jensen uneasy as hel. Nobody had ever paid that much attention to him.

The floppy haired human was even sleeping in the same room on the ground, constantly keeping guard.

The worst, and maybe the most humiliating part though, was as Jensen had stood up on shaky weak legs, managed to sneak around the sleeping human and towards the stairs leading down. He figured being a human in a village of humans would at least allow him to get out of there without being noticed. He may have had no idea at all what to do once he was outside the village borders, but he would figure something out once he was at that point. He managed to get up to the top of the stairs before the giant human used his height advantage to wrap arms around Jensen from behind, hoist him up and put him back to bed.

Tucked him in like a baby. Damn it.

That did not help with Jensen's opinion about his host at all.

Jensen stared at the smith distrustfully every time he approached with something to eat. First he had turned him into a human and then he had the guts to try and feed a dragon something not even the dead in the underworld would have looked at twice, and there were some damned to be so desperately hungry for what they had done that they gnawed their own flesh off of their bones.

“Hey,” Tristan said softly, still holding out the small earthen bowl. It was filled with gray sour smelling slime, small red-black bits of unknown origin mixed in.

Tristan smiled, and yes, alright, that had some strange kind of appeal, but didn't make the bowl more inviting. And If anything, it confused Jensen even more and he was already pretty much in over his game already with being a human, thank you very much.

“Look, I know you have no reason to trust me, but I really don't want to hurt you,” he continued. Jensen glared at him hard. He didn't want to hurt him? No, he just turned him into a weak and fragile human that ached all over and was caught in a bed, in a room with a giant stupid human.

Tristan moved down by the side of the bed and put the bowl down on the edge, adding a wood spoon to the gray sludge in it. If possible, it looked even worse close up.

“But if you want to get better again, you have to eat,” Tristan reasoned.

Jensen just glared. His stomach, all aching muscles and bones aside, seemed delighted at the smell of the disgusting stuff in the bowl and growled like a savage beast. He wrapped his arms around himself and glared even harder, green eyes narrowed.

Tristan sighed and rolled his eyes and went with another approach. He took the spoon, shoveled a bit of the stuff on it and proceeded to mimic eating it.

“Here, it's not poisoned and it's yummy, I'll show you...” he said took a bite for real and grimaced. Jensen raised both eyebrows at him. “Maybe not really yummy, but good enough.”

“Tristan!” A voice called from down the stairs and Tristan stood up.

“I'll be back in a moment.”

Jensen watched him hurry down the stairs, then looked down and back at the bowl. His stomach was a fucking traitor for grumbling so loud. He was hungry, really, really hungry. As if he hadn't eaten in days, and yes, he indeed hadn't eaten anything since a day or so before the hunters had caught him.

Damn.

He hesitated for a few more minutes but in the end the hunger won out. He decided it was the magic, the being turned into a human, that forced him to give in to his need like that, picked the bowl up and tentatively tried to eat. It turned out to be only half as bad as expected, and after a few bites, the angry growling in his stomach turned into something pleasant enough to keep on eating.

He had almost forgotten the smith or where he was, and jerked slightly as he found Tristan standing at the top of the stairs watching him. Jensen glared but didn't stop eating. He imagined instead how the floppy haired human would have looked when dropped out of the clouds in free flight, screaming and flailing, but most of all not looking so god damn smug.

The days came and went like that.

Jensen's wounds healed and the strength his human body possessed came back piece by piece. But he was smart enough not to chance it and go outside like this before he was certain he really would reach the edge of the village before someone would stop him. A look from the small window in Tristan's room was enough to confirm what he had thought: the smith had not lied and he really was stuck in the middle of a hunter village. Wooden houses, women and children just outside busy with their daily chores, and hunters patrolling the streets and the wooden wall in the distance. He was caught, he was cursed, and had no hope of getting out with the smith watching over his every step.

The humiliation of just being picked up like a tiny human child and put back to bed was too great to let it happen again.

Still, he was used to the freedom of flight. Curiosity had driven him to fly further and further away from his home's shores and his brothers, and his damn curiosity had been what had made him track the human hunter ship on sea. He was young and stupid, his brothers had told him often enough, and he never should have crossed the borders into the human world, but even now he still felt the urge deep inside him. If anything, being human made it only worse.

Maybe he would find a way to get out of here somehow, get his brothers to find him to undo the curse.

He hesitated at the top of the stairs that led down into the living area and listened. It was not just the smith but at least four other people talking, he knew the voices of at least one of them from the ship. In the end he went down and slipped across the room and towards the workshop. Inside, he found the Smith and the old man, Beaver, one of the sailors from the ship, and another man who had trouble holding down a horse. Beaver stood leaned against the side of one of the stable boxes, watching, the man Jensen knew from the ship sat beside him on a bundle of hay, he had his broken arm bandaged to his chest, and Tristan and the fourth man were with the horse, a dog dancing around their legs excitedly whining.

Tristan was too busy to order the dog to calm down, but the bitch felt the same Jensen felt, and tried to calm her sister horse down somehow. Jensen understood the pain in the creature's pitiful voice as it all but screamed to be let loose, to run, to get away from the hands holding her down that had brought so much pain in the past. If Jensen still would have been his true nature he could have helped her, could have calmed her down, but as a human he was useless.

The smith tried his best to calm her down, showed her he didn't mean to harm her, but as worked up as the mare was, it was futile. She shied and bucked, threw her legs out behind her hitting the stable door and throwing herself sideways against the pain in her flanks. The fur on her back was patchy and her skin below rubbed raw from too long with a saddle. An infection had settled in the flesh from being covered for too long, and now her entire body seemed on fire with pain.

She bucked once more and lifted her front legs into the air, kicking for the men holding her down. Tristan jumped back but the dog still tried to calm her down, trying to convince the mare to give her Master a chance to help her. The bitch earned a hoof to her side for her efforts as the horse turned with her behind to the humans in the room, and flew a few feet before she landed as a crumbled whimpering heap at the base of one of the boxes.

Jensen watched Tristan for a few seconds before he turned his attention on the dog. She laid on her side in the hay, forgotten and hurt, and whimpered pitifully. She still felt the pain of the flesh, but her soul was already tearing on the seams of her body eager to leave for the other world. It was a matter of a few more minutes until her soul would succeed and follow the path to the underworld. Jensen ached to follow, fly above the track of dead souls wandering towards the halls of the gods below him, and back into freedom.

He knelt down at her side and rested his hand on her neck. The dog's heart fluttered weakly under the short brown fur and she looked up with tired pained brown eyes. He leaned forward and pressed his brow to her skull, closed his eyes and just breathed for a while, long and deep and calming. The fluttering pulse quieted down under Jensen's hand and the pain he felt in the dog ebbed away slowly. She whimpered and he hummed for her a little like he would with his brothers at the bridge, the vibration echoing through her was not as strong as it would have been with his real voice but sufficient. She was afraid like all beings were when the soul was about to leave, but he took that fear with his humming, with his presence, and his touch, and she was no longer frightened.

“I need you to do me a favor,” he whispered close to the dog's ear. “You will find a bridge where the men cross, there will be my brothers... you have to tell them something for me.”

And he whispered his request for help.

The dog answered with a short yelp and Jensen smiled, he knew she would do that for him. He gave her peace in return, took her fear. Seconds after that she left and Jensen ached in envy for the path he couldn't take.

“How Is she?” Tristan said from above him. “Is she...” he trailed off. “Oh.”

Much to Jensen's surprise the larger man knelt down beside him, reaching out to rest his hand on the side of the now dead dog. He hung his head and his bangs hid his eyes away from Jensen's sight. It almost looked as if the Viking felt sadness about the lost life of the dog, as if he actually was on the verge to shedding tears.

Jensen felt not shocked, not exactly, but surprised at yet another show of emotion. Part of him wanted to snort hysterically, he had seen men do many things, but compassion or sadness over something like the death of an animal had scarcely been amongst it.

This man, Jensen started to understand, was full of surprises.

  
:::

_Many run on the trail, men and horse and wolf and her kin, too. She put her nose to the ground and followed the traces with the passion of hunt instinctive to her tribe. Mother and Father, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. All went the same way. There's water below and air, green fresh grass and icy white rock. She felt and saw differently now, better. And she could taste the border and the bridge men crossed on the air long before she saw the golden bridge and blurry pastures on the other side. Golden beings, birds with tails and without feathers, sat on top and at the sides. They watched men wearily. She stopped and one bent down its head to her. Her tongue lolled from the chase and she smiled for the giant, then repeated what the man had said to her before the pain had gone away. They jumped into the sky in a wild flurry of wings and tail, crazily chirping and howling. The guard came forward, half her skin black and made from bad meat, half young and smiling. She scratched behind her ears and let the dog cross the bridge. She did her part, now she would play._

 


	5. PART V

 

This evening Jensen stayed awake for a long time. He stared at the wooden ceiling above him and wondered about how long it would take for his brothers to get the news. He had flown across frozen ocean and deserted lands for days before he had reached the land of the living, and most creatures, humanity included, had to cross these landscapes to find the bridge at all.

Some even got lost on their way.

The bitch might need days or longer, maybe she even would get lost on the way. He didn't want to think about that, really not. Staying a human for the rest of his life? Please, no. His kin had eternity, had from the days of creation of the world tree to whenever the Gods would decide it was time to end their creation for good, the time of a human life was just a blink of an eye in comparison.

He turned on his side with a wince, still sore from his wounds although they were a lot better now than in the beginning, and watched Tristan snore peacefully beside the bed on the ground. He looked so innocent and helpless like this, all relaxed and trusting. Jensen could kill him in his sleep, throttle Tristan or use one of the knives from down in the workshop. Still, the human trusted him enough to know Jensen wouldn't do it.

“You should sleep,” Tristan said without warning, making the dragon jump.

“Gods,” Jensen panted, falling back on his back not willing to let the human see how much he had just been surprised.

“I'm serious Jensen,” Tristan continued, worriedly. “You need your sleep, if your wounds hurt, I can get you some of the herbs my mother left for you.”

He sat up, already preparing to get down to the hearth and prepare something to dull the pain. Dammit.

“No.”

Tristan frowned at him for a moment. Jensen couldn't see it in the dark, but knew he was doing it. It was frightening how much he knew of that man already. Stupid humans.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Fine.” Tristan slowly eased back to the ground. For a few moments there was silence, just a few sounds from outside and their breathing.

“You know,” Tristan started. “If you want to talk, I'd listen.”

Jensen frowned at the ceiling above him. What?

“I mean, it's certainly hard to be what you are now, with being used to being a Dragon and all.” Tristan shrugged, awkwardly tugging the thin blanket he used to cover up back in place above him.  
“And... I think people are pretty different, so you might not understand some things...”

“... I'm fine.”

A lie, of course. There were a lot of questions, curiosity was driving him half nuts, but he would not give in to that. Again there was silence for a while and Jensen almost had thought the human had fallen back asleep, but no such luck.

“My mom used to sing for me when I couldn't sleep,” Tristan said suddenly. “Some song in her mother tongue that I never really understood, but it was soothing.”

Jensen couldn't even remember having a mother.

“She's not of your people?”

Tristan smiled at the question.

“No, my dad brought her along from a hunt many years ago. She was a Christ's daughter. I think, her Family died at the hands of demons and her village was about to burn her, or something.”

Jensen nodded slowly. He had seen Christians in passing, a strange bunch they were with their one god and all. Everything they didn't know was evil, but that was common to a lot of humans. The hunters had no idea who they were hunting most of the time either. Sure, there are a lot of creatures out there that should be avoided, but others were harmless and part of the order of things, not demons to hunt.

“She must miss her Family.” Jensen sure did.

“She got my dad, my brothers and me.” Tristan sighed, closing his eyes. “We're her Family now.”

Tristan turned his head to toward the bed.

“Do you have a Family?”

Yes. Jensen had a Family. That would come, would get him, and would turn him back into a dragon, it was just a matter of time.

“I understand that you don't want to answer that one,” Tristan said after a few more minutes. “And I'm sorry, so sorry for making you human.”

Jensen took that as the apology it was, staring at the ceiling for a long time after. Tristan fell asleep again, all trusting and peaceful, and Jensen would just be able to kill him one way or another. But Jensen knew he wouldn't do it with the same certainty he knew Tristan was really sorry for turning the dragon. He just couldn't get it done. It was one thing to defend himself or protect his mistress, but this man? A man who trusted him and cared for him, who could be so gentle and emphatic with animals like no human being Jensen had ever seen or heard of? No. Tristan did not deserve death.

The question was though, what his brothers would do when they would come to find Jensen. How would they turn him human again? By ripping Tristan to shreds? By destroying the entire village? He didn't know.

As much as the thought of them coming was calming him down just a while ago, now it made him feeling strangely uneasy.

Crap.

 

:::

 

Jensen watched with interest how Tristan spent the next few days caring for the mare. Her back looked bad, covered for too long and down to raw flesh from the carelessness of her rider, but the smith didn't give up. He cooked up evil smelling ointments after a recipe that Jensen couldn't read and spread it on the wounds every morning and every night. Tristan soothed the horse's pain with his soft voice and careful attention, just like he had cared for Jensen in the beginning.

Jensen had never seen a human care like this for a creature, in his experience, for vikings, hunters, and most men in general, animals were not worth the effort. The rider of the horse had showed no guilt about the way he had abused her, and had just been angry that she no longer could carry him. And Tristan? Tristan was not even mad at the mare for having killed the workshop dog in her panic, he felt sorry for the bitch and her painful death, but he was not angry with the horse.

“It's in their nature,” he had said and shrugged. “Horses run when they get scared, they kick out when you hold them, it's how they are.”

He said it with patience and understanding. Jensen, really, didn't understand him at all. Of all the humans, this one seemed the biggest riddle, or maybe it was just because he was the first one Jensen actually had the chance to watch this close.

Six days later, the horse had become better. The patches of skin had started to close up again and heal, and with a little luck even the fur would grow back eventually. The owner took in the words of how to treat her in order to be able to ride her again soon, but even Jensen knew how the gruff looking man just would go on like he had before and mistreat her, or even worse.

“A horse I can't ride for months?” The hunter glared up at Tristan. “Is this a joke? What good is a horse I can't ride?”

“She'll need a little longer before you can put the saddle back on her back,” Tristan explained patiently another time. “Otherwise the wounds will just break open again.”

The hunter shrugged and took the ropes the horse was tied to in his hand, tugging hard on it.

“Whatever,” he muttered. “Forget it smith, I heard you'd be good with the horses, but obviously the rumor was overrated.” He gave the smith a mustering look from head to toe, then flicked his eyes over to where Jensen sat on a ball of hay watching. “If I can't ride the horse, I might as well cut her up nice and hang her up as bait for the monster still out there.”

He smiled at Jensen, bad teeth showing.

“Dragons are greedy beasts, they take whatever you give 'em.”

Jensen narrowed his eyes. That was not true. He had only ever eaten the weak and the sick in his time in this world, animals that wouldn't have survived the next winter or had been wounded already. He had not once touched dead meat.

“Not as good as a christian virgin girl,” the hunter chuckled, waggling his eyebrows. Tristan tensed up. Jensen could see the muscles in the smith's neck tense up below the thin linen shirt he wore and felt even more appalled by the comment of the hunter than the whole lies about dragons before.

“But virgin's are hard to get bye around here, right?” The Hunter crackled with laughter at the sour faces of both, Jensen and Jared.

Jensen had never, ever, ever touched a human sacrifice. He could not speak for other kinds of dragons, but this was an insult worse than everything he'd ever heard. And that in front of Tristan whose mother once might have been one of these christian girls, only saved from being sacrificed to something because Tristan's father had been there.

Jensen found himself standing up on wobbly legs, much to Tristan's surprise and glared harder. This was typical, this was how Jensen knew hunters: provoking, foul mouthed, heartless, angry and with a lust for a good fight.

“I'll buy her, then” Tristan said next, drawing attention back on himself.

And he did. For a far too high price.

:::

Weeks of being human turned into a month before Jensen had really understood that time had passed at all. Being turned into a human had all been new and somehow frightening – although he would never admit that to any of the humans, especially Tristan.

Jensen had always been vulnerable through the way he was open for new things. Open for influence. And Tristan used that backdoor sneaking in through Jensen's defenses unknowingly waltzing over any wall there was, worst of all, not even noticing it.

Tristan pestered Jensen until the dragon ate, cared for the wounds and bruises until they were mostly gone, and kept on talking about anything the smith did day in and out on any given opportunity. And just like with the horse he bought of the insulting hunter instead of ripping the guy a new one, or with the trust in Jensen he openly showed each night, he couldn't understand.

After a few more days, Tristan even took the dragon along for things he had to do outside of the house. And so, most days Jensen was in the workshop or stables watching Tristan or talking to the horses and animals, or he wandered with the smith through the town, delivering things, or checking on horses. It was strange.

Jensen found himself reluctant at first to do anything at all, but the need to move won out.

In the evenings, Jensen sat in the bed and Tristan laid on the ground on his thin blanket steadily talking about horses and the people in the town, things the people did, about the hunters and their futile search for the dragon.

About his family.

About himself.

Sometimes it felt like Tristan told him secrets, something not shared with anyone before. And as much as Jensen hated to admit it, the better his injuries got and the longer it took for his brothers to come, the closer he listened to what Tristan said.

Slowly, and without him really noticing, Jensen found himself craving to know what was going on. He had always been so damn curious, had always wanted to know what was going on beyond the veil of clouds parting underworld from the world of the living, and that hadn't changed with his form. He got bored, got curious, got himself in trouble; that was the order things happened in his life, and he was about to start the circle all over again. He found himself climbing down the stairs instead of keeping away from the people, seeking out the smith to understand things better, understand him better, and when he was outside, studied even the hunters and their behavior in comparison to the women and children outside.

He wanted to know things, wanted to hear stories, and he downright needed Tristan's presence to sleep.

One evening, for example, he found the blanket empty and went to find his human smith. Beaver snored on his bed in the corner close to the fireplace and the workshop was empty. He found Tristan sitting in the back of the stable on a ball of hey, talking sweetly to something moving at his feet. The mare with the damaged back stood close by, looking in on the scene curious about the movement, but Jensen couldn't see what exactly it was. It made his curiosity burn hot in his chest.

The creatures made small yipping sounds and rolled around in a bundle of woolen dirty blankets between the smith's feet, bounding from one side to the other in the attempt to shake off the cover.

Tristan laughed and reached into the pile of blankets to chase the yipping something around in the bundle as if it was a game. Jensen found his curiosity flare up even more and he sneaked closer, looking in over the smith's shoulder.

“What is that?” he asked, but Tristan didn't need to answer.

A puppy head appeared out of the bundle, large dark eyes, happily lolling tongue, and if Jensen wouldn't have known better, the animal was smiling with childish happiness from the attention it was getting.

Tristan reached down and scrubbed behind the floppy ears.

“Hey there, boy.”

A second puppy emerged, scruffy around the ears and of a different color, but obviously, as ecstatic about being played with. They were both male, a little thin and still very young, as far as Jensen could tell.

“I got them from a fisher,” Tristan explained. “He wanted to drown them.”

He shrugged and Jensen couldn't help but stare at the puppies and how Tristan seemed to be the best thing that had ever happened to them by the way they were all over him. He sat down beside him.

“How can one do that? They are just babies,” he said and reached out his hand for one of the puppies. The animal playfully tried to fetch Jensen's fingers with his clumsy paws, falling over in the process. He laughed and went to rub the puppy's belly instead.

Tristan smiled fondly at him as well as at the dogs and it made Jensen uneasy but in a surprisingly pleasant way, he smiled back.

That human didn't make it so easy to not like him, the dragon knew firsthand. Jensen just couldn't understand how that human was just cutting right through all of Jensen's reasons not to. There were a lot of things about these damn humans, though, that he couldn't even start to comprehend.

Jensen had some rudimentary understanding of those born through the will of the gods, knew the trolls and Fairy Folk and how to stay out of their way, but humans, man, he couldn't even start to understand their motivations.

And since he was turned into a human, he could not even understand himself anymore.

Just couldn't understand why he felt just happy sitting there beside the human instead of anxiously awaiting his brothers' arrival at any moment.

:::

  
Tristan disliked building or repairing ships. Mostly because It was not his line of business, but also because it meant nothing else but giving up Beaver's shop to total strangers for however long it took for them to bring the ship back in order.

Hallinga, the village of the ship builders, was about seven days travel away down the coast which meant he had about another two or three weeks after a few of the hunters would be dispatched to call some specialists in, until they would come and take the only spot he had in his village over. Beaver cursed about the prospect of it, like it was another monster that was about to attack, but some solid drinking with his buddy Morgan dulled that a little.

Still, Tristan hated it, but followed like every other villager, the necessary things to do to help the hunter's getting back on sea. The village chief had been adamant to help with whatever he could, and after two months of no visible sign of the dragon anywhere around, he put his people's energy rather into helping with the ship than anything else.

Building a ship, or repairing it for that matter, was a action the whole village was involved in. The women repaired the sails and prepared what was needed for new ropes, the elderly and children went to the woods about to collect wood for the fires needed to repair the ship's planks, and the adult men not occupied with patrolling around the landscape still searching for the dragon, went to the large dark forest at the base of the mountains to find wood for the ship.

A group of about 20 men started out one morning, heading for the forest with horses full of tools and hunters at their side as guards. Cutting wood would probably take days or weeks, so the more people they took along, the faster it went.

Tristan went along for his muscle and the knowledge to sharpen the tools. Subsequently Jensen, since he was mostly healed up by now, went along. The dragon held himself alongside Tristan, avoiding the lines of hunters around them, but eased visibly as they reached the forest.

The air was fresh and cool, the ground soft and shadowed by all sorts of trees, and everything smelled differently than the village at the coast. The horses and a hand full of hunters remained at the edge, the others ventured inside the shadows. Up and down hills and past dozens of fine trees without even trying to cut down any off the strong straight stems. Instead, the men walked around the trees and further through the forest, looking up in the sky and the foliage as if they where searching for something that nobody else could see.

Tristan followed the men like a oversized puppy, carrying ropes and some tools with him, and having the two puppies running around between his feet. Jensen carried a bag with tools too, stopping on top of a rock not far from Tristan's side as one of the villagers started to climb up a tree. Others were standing below the tree pointing up to the branches, but Jensen had no idea why, Tristan could see it in his eyes.

“They're finding the branches to cut them,” Tristan explained. Jensen threw him a confused look and Tristan just smiled in return.

“If they cut the rips out of the straight stems, they break more easily, when they pick the branches that grow naturally like they need it, they are stronger.”

He enjoyed explaining things to Jensen more than to anyone else before. It was a little like he was talking to a sibling, or someone speaking a different language where he had to show what a table was good for to understand what the word table meant, even if that made him sound as if he was talking to a child that just didn't understand some things. The first few times he had done that, Jensen had been pretty annoyed, downright angry, but Tristan had meant it good and as soon as Jensen understood that, he felt no longer angry, but oddly fascinated by the attempts. Or well, that was Tristan's impression of the intense stares fixed at him.

Jensen looked back to the man in the three branches who had started to hack in on a wickedly bent branch.

“When the branch is down, we will work on it, then come back to do the next branch, and the others will go on and bring the finished rips and blanks to the shore.” Tristan pointed ahead where other men had found another good tree and another young guy prepared to climb it. .

“My kin I get, but yours.” Jensen shook his head and jumped off his stone and close to Tristan's side.

Tristan shrugged.

“I admit, sometimes we're a little odd,” he said, still smiling a infectious bright smile complete with dimples and the slightest promise of teeth. Jensen couldn't help but smile in return.

That moment lasted a little too long, though. And maybe it was just Tristan, but there was just that fraction more in this eye contact than expected and it caused a wicked shiver that run down Tristan's spine. It was a little like on that first day he had seen the dragon, strapped to the ship and broken, but deeper, better, different.

Jensen turned his eyes away first, and walked slowly on without another word. Whatever had been there was broken now.

Oops-

Tristan could have kicked himself for that little moment, letting too much of the affection he had developed for the dragon out. Too much of a feeling he probably shouldn't have started in the first place. Whatever it was that had made him feel so close to the dragon in the beginning, had made him wish for his safety and life, had grown, and he wasn't sure he could deal with this.

Damn.

:::

Jensen put his eyes to the the ground and watched his own feet move like he had watched the world fly on below him back in the day, head ducked and fine layer of sweat stinging on his cheeks. It was either embarrassment or something else, whatever it was, it was bad.

Another sign that he was too close to humanity now, or that being human made things inside him all messed up and confused.

And it got even worse as the day went on. It got warmer and warmer, and after the first branches were down everyone, including Tristan, started to drag the branches to the edge of the forest where they would be cut and then transported back to the village. In his true form, Jensen would have had no problem to do the job mostly all on his own, like this though, and with Tristan too worried about him to let him actually work more than carry around ropes, sitting with the puppies and fetching tools required, he was sort of damned to watch the others.

To watch Tristan.

And as if the smile and blushing thing from earlier had not been bad enough, Tristan shrugging out of his linen shirt to continue work without it in the heat, was worse. Jensen had no problem at all with other men doing that, in fact he didn't care for the hairy bulky shapes at all, up to a short while ago, he hadn't cared for human bodies at all, period, but to his surprise, Tristan was another story.

Parts of the dragon started to appreciate the visual stimulation in a way that should freak him out a lot, but somehow the spike of arousal didn't feel wrong or unwelcome and that irritated part of the dragon more than all the irrational human behavior he had witnessed until now combined.

It was almost as if he adapted to being a human.

Great.

Really, really great. He scrubbed a hand across his face and sighed wearily. First leaving his brothers got him caught by hunters, then he got nearly killed and wished human, and as if that wasn't bad enough yet, all these stupid human behaviors he had been so stupidly curious about in the past just had wormed their way into him without him allowing it.

“You okay Jensen?” Tristan asked. He had come up beside the dragon while Jensen had been covering up his eyes, now standing before him.

Jensen looked up, Tristan smiled, and damn him to hel, he couldn't help returning it no matter how much he would have like to.

This was, Jensen decided, where the curiosity ended, and the getting into trouble part begun.

:::

_Big brother flew for a very long time, measured in human time, maybe for weeks or months. Time was not the same on the other side. The world was gray and dead below, frozen or dried to desert, then everything turned blinding white. Earth shivered as they broke the border between living and dead. For a second they were confused by the world, blinded by the sun, then rage won out against irritation and they cut through the clouds straight for the nearest human settlement._


	6. PART SIX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tiny expedition into the past

**32 years ago...**

 

...From the ocean in the north, to the mountains in the south, and even further. All of this, all you can see, to the horizon in all four direction, is my Kingdom,” the Kind said proudly. “Is it not beautiful, my daughter?”

Mary nodded slowly.

“Yes, Father.”

It wasn't anymore.

The Bishop standing beside her Father nodded in agreement, his black eyes sparkling with a sort of wickedness that let Mary avoid his looks.

The man was fat and swollen up, his face was pale and the skin nearly translucent expect for a darkish spot right below his right ear. He looked dead and empty with his eyes all wrong and uncoordinated, and he smelled sharply of bad eggs and decaying meat whenever he came too close. He did that, the coming closer than she wanted, no matter how much she tried to avoid it.

Bishop Heinz had been unpleasant before – always too close to the children at court and too keen on touching Mary at any given chance he had gotten as her tutor in her childhood days- but since his miracle cure from the same sickness that had killed Mary's mother, he had turned downright disgusting. The worst of it was, however, that her beloved father had started to listen more and more on what the old Bishop had to say, controlled almost like a puppet.

He was under the spell of the Bishop's words, and it got only worse and worse with time.

Mary looked out between the the battlements on the colorless landscape. The fields had dried and the fruit gone bad on the trees; people were sick and dying on the streets or crowding the churches to beg for forgiveness from God for their past foolishness of following the wrong religion. She had grown up looking at a country all green and fertile, but this ashen wasteland no longer was what she had been born to.

16 years of wealth and happiness, but now, just two years after her mother's death, her father's kingdom had been torn up and poisoned.

Her father, the King, had done nothing about pestilence, war and famine.

No, instead the darkness came and brought their invisible hounds to create even more misfortune in the villages around the castle. Their red glowing eyes in the darkness the only visible sign of their approach on the prey. It had almost become normal that people were ripped apart at nights by soulless red-eyed shadows and found half eaten or spread across their houses in pieces on the next morning.

At least, up until that day.

She saw the men first, riding on their horses up the dirty streets toward the castle. Proud, tall and foreign, wearing their shields and armor and holding up battle flags covered in runes and creatures of the old beliefs.

For the first time she felt hope. Even more so after the Bishop had visibly recoiled from them as they approached the gate.

“Hunters,” he spit. “Son's of the old Gods. Heathens.”

The King's face contorted into a displeased mask of disgust.

“I'll send them away,” he said.

And he did as they came and requested a audience to offer their help with the demonic presence in his lands. Their King had heard from merchants about what had happened to the Kingdom and so the hunters had been sent by the King of the North to pay their respects and offer their service.

They didn't leave though, much to the Bishop's displeasure.

The hunters did what they did best.

They hunted down three of the invisible beasts in one night. Cut them down fearlessly and more effectively than any number of the King's knights had ever been able to, not that they had actually tried.

The next morning the northmen had laid out the blood covered monsters in the dirt before the Castle's gates. Their shapes only visible through dirt and the enormous amount of black blood covering their otherwise hidden forms. Their eyes had lost their glow, but they remained large and frightening even in death.

“You have a demon here,” the leader had declared, pulling a wickedly shaped silver hook from one of the creatures. “These are its hounds.”

“Liars! Heathens!”

The Bishop had chortled in rage, face nearly as red as his robes, and started cursing and yelling loud enough to make the court members present shiver in their spots. He demanded that the King force these foreign men and their monsters out of the Kingdom.

“They try to deceive you, my Lord,” he said, leaned in close to the King. “Do not trust these men!”

“Is this not enough evidence that we speak the truth?” One young dark haired hunter stepped forward, kicking one of the bloody carcasses in the side.

The Bishop growled in outrage, but Mary couldn't help but stare at the young man with the green eyes and a deep scar leading up his neck toward his ear. Something told her that he was who she must hold on to if she wanted to change things, that this hunter, this man, was who would save her and her lands from the darkness, from the Bishop and his touchy hands. In a way, it was as if the goddesses of the old beliefs had designed their destinies to knot at this very moment.

“I appreciate that your King sent you in good will,” the King said, stepping forward. “But my kingdom is not hunted by your demons or devils, and we are in no need of help. Whatever you slaughtered here was brought with you from your monster infested icy landscapes, take it and leave with it as quickly as you came.”

The hunters didn't look very impressed by the words of Mary's father. They just remained standing there, facing off the King, the Bishop and the rest of the assembled court.

“Now leave, before I order my knights to enforce my order,” the King added and turned around, the Bishop smiling again as he followed with flowing red robes.

Mary remained a moment longer, watching curiously from where she had hidden herself up on the wall to spy unnoticed on what was going on by the gate. She saw how the the hunters exchanged looks and before they walked away as well, leaving the dead hounds behind.

That night, they came back and all hell broke loose, literally.

At first, Mary hadn't really understood what was going on in the castle, even after all that had happened on the streets of her kingdom, she had not even thought about what kind of dangers could lurk in the dark in that moment.

There had been a crash a few halls down, echoing through the entire part of the castle and across the court. She gathered her coat up and snuck passed the sleeping guard posted outside her door to investigate, only to find invisible forces ripping a man apart at the base of the tower stairs.

It was a hunter.

The invisible creature was splattered with the human's blood and nothing more than a shaggy looking creature larger than any hound she had ever seen. It growled unbelievable loud as it noticed her and let go of the dead hunter's body in order to pounce.

It was that moment the young hunter that she had seen appeared out of the shadows and pushed her aside, impaling the pouncing creature quickly.

The weapon didn't hold the thing down for long though, so he grabbed her by the hand and together they ran away from the tower's stairs and toward the court.

Outside, it became even worse.

People were running around, the hounds randomly attacking anything that moved or made a sound. Fires flickered in the windows of the buildings around the court, rats with red eyes swarmed the corpses on the dirt floor and she could hear screams from all directions at once.

It was the most terrible sight she had ever witnessed, worse even, than she had imagined the end of the world or hell to be.

“Stay here,” the hunter said as they finally reached the throne room. He let go of her hand and thrust a dagger and a small leather bag with herbs and salt at her, then ran around the corner and into the room.

There were others, hidden behind the pillars and parts of the furniture. She could see how the flames inside licked high at the flags and tapestries, how her very own father crawled on the stone floor before the Bishop and the now destroyed throne, and how the fat man laughed, arms spread wide like a mockery of Christ.

“We made a deal,” he said. “I held my part... It's time for yours now!”

Her father stopped, raising to his knees with what power he had left. What little of him Mary could see, suddenly resembled a lot more the proud, good King Mary had known from childhood days. His whole being, even broken and wounded, no longer seemed bent by the influence of the Bishop.

A spell that had been cast years ago, seemed finally lifted.

“I won't give you my daughter! And I wont give you my land!” The King spit at the feet of the Bishop. “This was never part of the deal.”

“Ah well,” the Bishop said, letting his arms fall, in almost something like annoyance. “Everyone says that.”

He bent over to her father, smirking. “But a deal is a deal and I'm sure your meat and soul will be tasty, maybe they will even leave your eyes for long enough for you to see me have my time with your daughter.”

Her father, probably in a last attempt to undo his past mistakes, pushed up, a shard of splintered wood in his bleeding hand, to kill the demon possessed cleric. He didn't even touch him though, getting jumped and torn backwards by the Bishop's beasts.

She screamed, wanting to rush forward to help, but the young hunter jumped in and held her back. The hounds lifted their heads, growling angrily at the interruption, and before they or the Bishop could react the remaining hunters left their hiding spots. Two started to attack the beasts, the third started to speak a ritual on the Bishop.

Wind blew from nowhere and the flames went higher, the last of the hounds let go of her father and howled wildly. It was a glimpse into the darkness of hell, and the hunters stood their ground against it all, fearless and strong.

She wanted to run but couldn't, not with the way the hunter was holding onto her.

The Bishop spit black blood at them, cursing vehemently in a language Mary didn't understand. In one moment it was almost as if he was looking at her through all the smoke and chaos, spoke incomprehensible words, then he screamed inhumanly loud as a black cloud erupted violently from his throat, his invisible hounds wailing at the tops of their lungs with him.

Then, there was silence.

In the end the castle laid in ruins, too many people had died, and who hadn't died had run away as fast as their human feet could carry them.

It was a sad sight.

The hunters burned their own men and those people they could find. Mary stood before the end of her world, a bleak empty future, death by hunger or pestilence.

“You could come with us,” the young man, Cohen, said after a while of watching the fires together.

She looked at him, and the feeling she had had the very first time she had seen him was still there. And really, she had no real choices in the matter anyway, either with him or dying sometime in the near future.

She had nothing to lose and so much to gain.

She nodded.

He took her with him to his village, crooked houses at the top of a cliff and eventually made her his wife.

And for long years, she was happy alongside him having a new home and a new family that welcomed her.

However, it wasn't for long. With the years, people became impatient, and after seven years had come and gone without a child, Impatience had turned into mistrust and maybe even disgust.

It was dark in the bedroom. The wind outside howled like the monster of her youth.

7 years and no child.

A Hunter without sons. A proud warrior without any children at all, with a wife not good for anything, not even for that little.

Mary had done her best to be of use, to help, to heal. Still, with all she could do for the community as wife of the chief and as a healing woman and midwife, the most important part of her duty she couldn't fulfill.

Cohen held to her, still, although he knew it was weakening his position among the tribe, and still showed her his love each chance he got, but that didn't make it better that she never took on a fruit of their love.

In nights like those, she fell back on her old beliefs, praying to God and his Angels to give her a sign, to forgive her for her sins, just grant her one small miracle.

One would be better than nothing.

“Well, well, well, no sense in doing this, it's not as if your God, any God, would actually listen.” it whispered somewhere in the room and she opened her eyes.

She looked around the room, but there was nothing but a crow outside the window. She had let the blinds open to let the cooler air of the night hunt the heat of the day away. The bird croaked and fluttered on it's crooked tree branch but certainly hadn't spoken.

The only other thing in the room, she noticed, was a tiny mouse with a dark dot on her pelt. She sat down in a shadowed corner by the door, sniffing the air with her tiny nose.

Temporarily Mary relaxed, used to this kind of house guest, but only until the mouse spoke.

“Don't look so shocked.”

Mary scooted back on the bed, hastily grabbing for the dagger her husband had once given her, now kept by her below one of the pillows. She held it out in front of her. The mouse just shook its head, tail twitching as she laughed.

“As if that tiny thing can hurt me,” the creature chortled and slowly scurried across the room while continuing to speak, “You can put that down, I don't want to hurt you.”

“You are a demon,” Mary said steadily. “They are always out to hurt people.”

“Not a demon,” the mouse said, shaking her head. “Do I look like a demon to you? I'm a spirit, a good spirit.”

The mouse continued to mutter to herself as she hopped up a discarded blanket on the bed and took her position on top of the bed's wooden end. It balanced carefully and folded up her tail around her legs neatly.

“Do you really think a demon could step into a hunter village? But all your insults aside, I am here to help you,” the mouse said. “You prayed for that, didn't you?”

Mary still held out the dagger. From where could that thing know for what she had prayed?

“You want to ask how I can know that?” The mouse's tail twitched. “I just know it, that's all. Now, let's come to the good part, won't we.”

Mary watched wearily how the mouse hopped of the wood and onto the bed, slowly wandering toward her. Something was just that little bit familiar in the beady black eyes, but she couldn't place it. The whole thing, the entire situation, was too surreal all of a sudden, to think much of anything at all about it.

A wicked dream, she thought, nothing else.

“So,” the mouse said looking up at Mary. “You want to have something, children in this case,” it continued. “I can give you what you want.”

Mary's dagger started to sink, the idea of giving her husband what they both yearned for so much, weakening her. Sure, on one level she knew this was trickery, foul play, but she just couldn't help it at this point. 7 years had been damn long, and for all her beloved Cohen had done, she just wanted to make him happy in return.

“You... you can?”

The mouse rolled her little shoulders and raised to her hind legs.

“Easy. You've been cursed to be barren, nothing easier to lift that tiny curse,” it said. “It comes with a little price though.”

“What price?”

“Easy, I give you your children, as many as you want to have, but the last you give birth to, will be mine.”

“No!”

Mary woke from the trance that hope had created for a moment, crashed back into reality hard and jumped off the bed. She hurriedly crossed the room towards the door, would open it, go outside and alert her husband, or whoever else would be around.

“Wait, wait, wait, little princess,” the mouse yelled after her, and for some odd reason Mary paused at the door to look back.

“I'm fair, alright, there's nobody who does fairer deals than me, never had a complaining customer.”

And Mary turned.

“I will not give you my child, rather I stay without than damning innocent souls.”

The mouse rolled her eyes.

“Nobody spoke about damning them. I will give the kid a chance. The child will have the opportunities to help itself out of the deal. I will even give it the means for it, I promise.”

The mouse jumped off the bed and landed on the floor.

“And when I promise something, I hold on to it.”

Mary pondered that for a long moment. She would be able to prepare the child, help it, make sure it wouldn't fall victim to this. She would be able to do this right, to make it right.

Before she even knew what she was doing, she said yes.

The next morning she woke up, barely remembering what had happened the last night, and found Cohen's arms wrapped around her tightly. Maybe it was just a dream, and you were allowed to forget wicked dreams after all.

And she did.

She kissed him awake slowly, made love, just forgot why she had worried in the years before... and not a year later she gave birth to a son, one more following quickly.

And in the third year, she finally gave birth to another child. His birth turned out to be the hardest, and left Mary bleeding and weak for days. People thought he was a lost cause, too weak, too small, too wrong for a true hunter's child, but the little kid proved them all wrong. And as he turned stronger, his mother did as well.

He grew up, and albeit not being the ideal Viking or hunter, became strong in his own way, just like his elder brothers.

They were a family, and her husband a proud hunter in their village, having three sons to follow him into his line of profession.

She never told her husband, never told her son, never even thought about it again for longer than a moment. She probably hadn't been able to, even if she would have wanted to.

Deep down, though, she knew that her youngest son was special, and that there would be a day she would regret, even if she wasn't so sure anymore what. It was in some way, as if someone had veiled the life of her youngest child from her sight sometimes, drawing away her attention to something else.

She would remember soon enough.


	7. PART SEVEN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble at the horizon.

**Now...**

 

It turned evening, and instead of going back to the village, they set up camp at the edge of the forest. The hunters kept watch and the workers clustered around half a dozen roaring fires to keep the creatures of the night away and to stay warm.

That night Jensen laid awake under the stars. He stared at the moon and the stars, and the bronze and golden tongues of the gods licking across the sky like a dozen coiling snakes.

So, he was in trouble. In BIG trouble. He could hear in his mind what his brothers would have said about this whole 'being human' thing.

How can you be so close to humans?

How can you be so curious about the nature of something that's not off his own world or kin?

How could he even care what the things walking across the bridge had done to be on their way to the halls of the dead or vanish forever in the darkness of nothing?

Curiosity, kid, will bring you nothing but trouble.

“Thanks, man,” he muttered to himself, or to his brothers, rubbing a hand across his face for what felt the tenth time in as many minutes. He could still taste the salt on his lips, could smell his own sweat soaking through his clothes and chilling him in the night, and in his mind he could see the face of his biggest brother look at him in annoyance and disgust.

The golden streaks of light at the Northern sky sparkled like the scales of his brothers' enormous bodies. Should his brothers listen to Jensen's call, very soon they would fall from the sky and destroy everything.

It was terrifying.

Though, here and now, when he turned his head to the man sleeping beside him on the wool blanket, he found it easy to ignore that fear. Watching Tristan smile and talk and walk, even sleep, he could so easily forget how his brothers would react. Instead, he found other things reacting.

So yes, hello, he was in trouble.

He turned his face back to the sky and sighed deeply. At the sound Tristan shifted a little, pressing his shoulder against Jensen's. The larger man made a sniffling sound at the contact, and wriggled even closer to the source of warmth.

Jensen stared at the sleeping man with wide eyes, but, for the love of the gods and all things otherworldly, he could not move away from the closeness.

Trouble.

Big Trouble. 

~+~

The human world smells of blood, death and shit. It's ridiculously easy to find human settlements, find human ships, find the hunters' tracks, just by the stench of the inhuman blood on their hands.

They don't even see the fire coming before their ships and houses burn and squeak like the vermin they are when they burn.

Big brother boils with blind rage, determined to find his smallest sibling at all costs. He was shaped by the gods themselves, and no creature like that is meant to die at human hands.

He'll find him, even if he has to burn every damn human in the world.

~+~

The harder men worked, the more they yearned for the good things in life. Another thing Jensen started to understand while he watched the human world around him. Women, beer, music, talking and laughing, to name just a few of the earthly pleasures, were so important that every chance the hunters got was used. Cutting the wood and shaping it into parts for the ship's reconstruction had been hard work, and had taken nearly a week, so it was only justified to celebrate the successful doing of the deed a little.

The village men had cut down enough wood for the ship repair, shaped the majority of the branches in a way that allowed transportation and that without anyone sustaining injuries or worse.

That also called for a little celebration to thank the gods for that much. And Vikings, especially hunters, knew damn well how to do that.

The last night in the camp at the edge of the woods was full of song and beer, and of laughter that made even the most wrinkled weathered faces looking a lot younger and less intimidating. Jensen sat amongst them and, although Tristan didn't let him have any of the drink going around, he enjoyed the general happiness of the people a great deal.

So far up in the north, the sky darkened pretty late in the night, but by then most of the people around had drunk enough and settled down to sleep all over the camp.

Jensen wasn't sure who to thank for the nights on the wool blanket. He had spent the precious hours so close by the side of his friend, that waking up would have been embarrassing, if Jensen hadn't tried to get up long before the smith would wake. Tristan was warm and comfortable when he curled up behind Jensen, and as wrong as it was, Jensen wanted the nights and the safe sleep so close to the smith to never end. 

~+~

In his dreams, Tristan was flying.

White fluffy clouds rushed past in maddening speed and the blue sky above was of a stainless bright blue that seemed endless when he dared to look up.

In his dreams, he held on to a dragon.

Tristan tried his very best to hold on to the bronze armor plates on the dragon's back as the powerful animal moved his large and golden wings to fly higher and higher. Then he banked to the left and went down, the tree tops of the forest Tristan had spent the last days cutting wood in rushing passed in a blur of green and black.

'hold on,' the dragon chuckled and pulled up again, leaving the forest behind, leaving the world behind.

'Jensen!' he called as they broke the clouds and rushed further into the blue beyond, up and up and up until the blue turned black and stars popped up. The Dragon laughed excitedly, not bound by any boundaries of the mortal world.

They floated among the stars.

'Don't be scared,' the dragon whispered. 'do you think I'd let you fall? That I'd let you fall to your death, let you die?'

'No,' Tristan whispered. He knew the dragon wouldn't.

The dragon snorted and rolled his shoulders. Tristan had to adjust his grip, curling his fingers around what leverage he could find. The Dragon curled his head back, looking down to the human and his green familiar eyes sparkled with something Tristan hadn't seen before.

Or rather, with something he knew all too well, but had tried to more or less avoid. He'd cared for the dragon, he'd wished him accidentally human, and he wasn't willing to do anything the creature probably didn't even understand. It was dirty and wrong and...

'Stop the worrying, your face turns all wrinkled when you do that,' the dragon teased. 'Makes you look old.'

'I...' Tristan stammered and Jensen, the dragon, laughed again, turning his head away.

'Do you think I'd be here, with you, If I didn't want to,' he said.

Tristan's brain, he had to admit, didn't make much sense in his dreams, it never had. And what the Jensen in his head said didn't much change what he felt, but in that moment he couldn't care less. He leaned forward, changing his position to hook one arm around one of the dragons shoulders as good he could.

'No you wouldn't,” he said and leaned his head against the neck of his golden friend. The Dragon was too large to really wrap his arms around his neck, but Tristan knew he would not fall no matter how wild the ride would be.

'hold on,' the Dragon said, then folded his wings up to bank downwards again toward the earth.

Everything went up in sparkles and fire, but Tristan didn't burn, he just held on and pressed his face into the scales of his Dragon.  
They were falling so fast, toward earth, toward the underworld, toward forever. 

~+~

This morning, Jensen had woken with an arm slung across his side and warm wet breathing on his neck. He had tingled all over, finding it hard to do anything else but press backwards and into the closeness he had never known as a Dragon. Dragons weren't that much into cuddling or physical contact, more into looking large and mean to the souls at their feet and here on the blanket so close to the smith, Jensen felt all the need for missed attention coiling in his stomach.

Every touch was a small treasure.

He had just closed his eyes again to rest a little longer, as the arm around him stiffened noticeably. Tristan's entire body went stiff as a board behind him within a matter of seconds, and a very awkward process of wriggling and shifting started.

He opened one eye peering at the arm as it slowly moved away. Tristan noticed that Jensen had woken at that moment, or well, somehow felt that the dragon had opened his eyes again, and blushed, a little caught in the act.

“Tristan?”

Jensen turned fully to the other man, ending up surprisingly close to him without even really trying.

“Eh...” Tristan blinked slowly, licking his lips nervously. “I'm sorry, I'm... I don't know.”

“Wouldn't have noticed,” Jensen muttered, trying very much to ignore the almost non-existing distance between the two.

“I am really sorry.”

And then, although when later asked neither one really knew why or how right in that moment, they kissed.

It was a pretty chaste, short and uncoordinated peck on the lips. Both of them had their mouths closed and their noses were in the way enough to not even let them hit fully lips on lips.

By any sense of the word, an awkward first kiss that had happened by accident, still half asleep and all that.

And Tristan was convinced these facts would have worked as an excuse for taking advantage of his poor confused dragon friend, but only for about another heartbeat.

“I...” he tried to say as he pulled back.

Jensen grabbed a hand full of Tristan's shirt, pulled and shattered the excuses forming pretty effectively right along with most of the whole guilt trip that had let Tristan start to freak out. This time as their lips met, to their surprise, they fit together like a key into a lock.

Jensen operated on a deep seated instinctual program, telling him exactly how to press his lips to Tristan's lips, and went with it, pressing forward into foreign terrain driven with the same power that had made him leave the underworld.

Tristan was just about to get over the panic he had felt at the initial contact and started to find interest in the way Jensen tried to lick his way into the smith's mouth – all curious and needy to work this out - and of course, return the favor, as one of the other men around chortled in his sleep.

The Hunter didn't rest far away, shifting on his blanket as if he was just short from waking up. Others stirred in their sleep as well, too close to the waking world for Tristan's taste.

Damn.

This lessened Tristan's enthusiasm quickly, and he sat up so fast Jensen flopped down hard on the blanket.

“Hey,” he muttered.

“Later,” Tristan assured him quickly, patting the dragon's knee with a big hand, and got on his feet.

“Later, alright?”

Tristan hurried off toward the dying fire, doing as if nothing had happened at all, leaving Jensen laying on his back confused, but grinning strangely.

“Later,” he repeated.

Jensen felt bad leaving the small encampment at the edge of the forest after that, but followed the Smith and the rest of the villagers back into the settlement with a giddy feeling in the pit of his stomach for what was yet to come. He was a little insecure about what exactly that would be, but if the kissing was anything to go by, the rest couldn't be so bad.

He wanted to kiss again, go further, do more.

With that thought in mind, the damn day, turned out to be way too damn long, in his opinion.

The men pulled the finished ship parts down to the shore, lining them up for the repairs. It took endless hours, or felt at least like that. And although Jensen didn't do more than carry additional tools and some blankets back to the village and later a few cans of water, he felt like it was a taking days to finish up.

Or maybe he just was a lot more distracted than before, too busy staring at Tristan's lips to pay as much attention as before, and even more so after Tristan had finally picked up on the staring and returned it with smiles.

“You seem happy,” Tristan told him, standing beside him at the shore later that day.

Both had finished the last of the work and now stood at the water looking out at the sun going down again. It was beautiful.

Jensen shrugged his shoulders. They were nearly alone after most people had already left to get home for the night, and the two of them were alone for the first time the entire day.

“Maybe I am,” he admitted.

Tristan snorted, and bumped his shoulder against that of his friend. It was a gesture of closeness, of friendship, maybe, judging by the smiles all day and the kiss this morning, even a little more than the above.

“Good.”

Another few minutes past by like that. Silence and peace and the sun going slowly down over the water. It was almost better to watch it from this perspective than flying amongst the multicolored clouds.

“Let's go home,” Tristan said after another beat.

“Alright.”

The two of them were on the way to the smith's house through the crowded paths between the houses, children played and woman still worked their chores. The sun was coloring the world in perpetual orange and gold for a few hours before true night would come.

This was, in a way, just what Jensen had been curious about... human life.

He looked back up to Tristan.

Human love.

Beaver rolled his eyes as he saw the two approaching, muttering things under his breath that Jensen couldn't understand. He welcomed them back with a gruffly muttered insult that let Morgan, who sat at the table, bandages still present on him, laugh off key and nearly choke on his brew, then he waved at them with a mug and jerked his head toward the stairs.

“Look at who wasn't eaten by the Trolls,” Beaver called. “Took you long enough to get home.”

“Was a lot of work,” Tristan answered.

The two young dogs run off to the well on the back of the stables to drink, and Tristan put down his tools he had still carried around. He would put them away later, Jensen followed his example.

“We can smell that,” Beaver said next. “Clean up, you boys, you certainly look like you need it.”

Morgan laughed even more as the two left toward the stable.

“And don't forget you've to go pick up the bronze in the market tomorrow!” Beaver yelled after them.

Morgan's laugh still send shivers down Jensen's spine, memories of pain and blades, hooks and chains. He shook it off, following Tristan back outside.

“What so funny?” Jensen asked.

“They're probably both drunk,” Tristan said, shrugging his shirt over his head. He threw it aside by the edge of the well where the dogs still were busy drinking their fill, nudging each other now and again. The two were growing like weeds, not long and all their puppy padding would be gone.

Beaver was drunk often enough when his joints hurt too much, or the terrors he might have seen in his time on the hunt caught up to him, and Morgan's weathered face looked not as if he had seen less darkness.

“It's what he does.”

Jensen shrugged, and started undoing his own shirt. The well was not far away from the stable door, but shielded from the view and wind at least a little. Usually, the dogs drunk here, the workshop and the household got their water here, and in summer they washed up here too.

By the time Jensen had thrown his own shirt on top of that of his smith, Tristan had already put his entire head below the water for a moment, getting rid of salt and sweat, and now tried to wrestle down one of the dogs who had taken that as invitation to playtime. The shiver Morgan had left in Jensen's back evaporated, quickly replaced by the giddiness again at the sight of the kind man, getting crazy with the dogs for a moment.

He couldn't help but smile along.

The happiness disappeared quiet quickly though, as Beaver inside the house coughed loudly. The sound made Tristan cringe.

“Sometimes, I'd wished he would be younger again,” Tristan admitted and patted Geri lovingly. The dogs sensed the change in emotion quickly, and trotted off into the stable.

Jensen shrugged. “You could wish for it, right?”

“I don't want to,” Tristan admitted. “I don't know, but I think despite all the pain he feels on the bad days, and the alcohol, he's still better off how he is, you know.”

Tristan grimaced and looked back toward the water, combing a hand through his long hair.

“Besides, I'm not sure the twig wouldn't mess up the wish again anyway, it's pretty unpredictable.”

Jensen snorted, coming closer and bending over to get to the water. A few faint scars zigzagged across his back, remnants of what had happened to him in his true form. Two of the lines, rough and about three inch long, right below the shoulder blades stood out the most prominent.

Wings, Tristan thought.

“I've noticed, thank you very much.”

Flying... his dream...

“Yeah,” Tristan said softly. “I'm still sorry about that, and I promise, as soon as it's safe out there, I'll wish you back.”

Jensen nodded, he wanted that, but really...

“Not right now,” he said. He scooped up water with his hands and wet his hair, letting the cool water run down his body.

Tristan frowned at the dragon for a second, but the confusion went away fairly quick as the dragon straightened up again and smirked at him.

“You said something about later,” Jensen said.

Tristan frowned for long moment, blushing as the words registered. He blushed in time with the faint bitterness of doubt and guilt, and a dozen other things, flaring up inside him, desire sharper than anything else amongst them.

Jensen moved, and this time around they fit perfectly.

No noses in the way, nobody watching – well, hopefully anyway – and enough time to find out exactly how much curiosity Jensen really has for what a human body can do with another one.

The night had only just begun.

~+~


	8. PART EIGHT

**Now...**

 

Lips can be soft, and firm and salty and sweet, and all of it at the same time. It feels funny to stroke another person's tongue with your own, touch teeth with the tip of your tongue that are not your own, taste another person's mouth.

 

Jensen had cataloged all the things he had seen humans do like entries in a diary right from the first day of his journey, probably long before he even left Hel. He added up sensations to the things now, went along with what his new humanity told him to do, and had learned things he had never thought would actually be real.

 

And this was kissing and the feelings cursing through him to urge him on, was just another new chapter.

 

He had to move his head back a little, stand up on his toes to get the angle right, but then, it was a miracle of human nature that they could do this seemingly strange thing with each other so perfectly, this intimate kind of touch and promise. And hey, Jensen had come this far because of his curiosity, and he was damn well not stopping with it now that things got interesting.

 

Damn his worries, who needed them anyway.

 

Tristan squeaked in surprise as Jensen's curiosity lead the dragon's fingers to trail down the smith's broad back and further down around his sides to curiously prod below the actual waistband of Tristan's working pants with surprisingly cool fingers.

 

“Jensen,” he mumbled, pushing away from the dragon.

 

“Yes.” The dragon smiled smugly up at him, not entirely letting go of the Smith's pants.

 

The sun stood low by then. A few more hours of twilight and it would get really dark. Everyone would go to bed to rest from their daily work and the town would become empty except for the guards on the wall and towers.

 

And damn, if a going to bed didn't sound like a damn good idea to Tristan right about now. Though, as much as he was fond of the idea to continue this, maybe even let Jensen go on with his curiosity, but Beaver was there, and Morgan... and even drunk they had good ears, and he just was not ready to let them see this.

 

“I... can't...” he said.

 

“Why,” Jensen asked, pulling Tristan forward by the waistband.

 

“If Beaver sees us...”

 

“What's so bad about that,” Jensen wondered. “I've seen so many of you humans do this under the open sky, out in fields,” he added and leaned up again to capture the Smith's lips.

 

“Eh... that's different...” Tristan mumbled undecided between leaning in and pulling away. The dragon didn't let him get far away though, tugging him back into a surprisingly passionate kiss.

 

“Boys!” Beaver called all of a sudden, and again Tristan was jumping away from Jensen fast doing as if he hadn't just let his dragon suck on his face like their lives depended on it. He quickly combed his wet hair back with both hands then poked his head around the corner to greet Beaver.

 

“Yeah?!”

 

“I'm going, taking another drink with the old bastard,” Beaver said, jerking his head toward Morgan who stood not far away. “Don't forget the bronze tomorrow morning!”

 

“We wont,” Tristan said.

 

The two men left, joking and talking with each other. Probably on the way to the town house, or to another of the sailors, or whatever. Tristan hurried back into the house, but Jensen didn't give up so easily.

 

A few minutes later, Jensen watched Tristan wander around the house, getting ready for the night. It was his new favorite thing to do -watching the other man- only topped by kissing him, and probably by what made his body vibrating in anticipation.

 

Tristan checked on the fire, checked the doors and threw a last look into the stable. Loki and Geri trotting along beside him still a little overeager. They had grown in size and the puppy features had already started to stretch into large canine features within just a few days, but the playfulness was there and would probably never fade.

 

The two pups yipped as they were sent to their spots over in the stable for the night, then Tristan closed the lower half of the wooden door and walked across the shop and to the bread by the hearth. He ripped a piece off and Jensen watched in confusion how Tristan laid the bread out in a corner at the back of the room whispering something that Jensen couldn't hear. Damn human lack of hearing.

 

Jensen had seen Tristan do that a few times before, but never had really wondered why, too preoccupied with other things.

 

“What's the matter with the bread?”

 

Tristan noticed his audience and straightened up, shrugging. “Old habit.”

 

“I don't get you humans,” Jensen said shaking his head. He went up the stairs first, went to the bed and shrugged out of his boots, then flopped down. Tristan followed at a slower pace.

 

“Told you we could be odd,” Tristan admitted.

 

And there they were.

 

The two of them stared at each other. Jensen rested on the narrow cot, legs sprawled open and blush tinging his cheeks a tempting pink. Tristan had seen that body in all forms of nakedness, had sewn up cuts, swept up the pearls of sweat pooling in the little valley where Jensen's collarbones met. He had seen and touched every freckle on his face and chest in that time of waiting for the dragon to become better. Innocently then, but now, innocence was the last thing on his mind.

 

And as much as it still felt like taking advantage of the confused dragon, he couldn't help but feel a strange urge to lick every single one of the tiny speckles peppering the dragon's skin.

 

Jensen looked Tristan over at the same time. Smirking at the way the smith studied how his sprawled out position on the cot. The feelings heating his body up and driving him insane, was new and exciting and driven by something very human deep inside him. Part of him knew that he shouldn't feel like this for a human, knew that he was not even human, and even if he somehow could make himself accept that he looked at a human that way, then it at least should have been a female – but damn, the rest didn't care at all for anything.

 

In that moment all the doubt fell off him like rain drops.

 

He just wanted.

 

Damn curiosity.

 

Tristan lowered himself slowly, getting met half way by a very eager dragon. Their bodies lined up just right, as if the Gods had made them both to fit and compliment each other physically as well as with their souls.

 

And so much skin to taste, Tristan thought, so many freckles to count and kiss. Each a tiny golden spot, a tiny golden scale on the armor of his dragon. Tristan tried his best to put a kiss of those he reached, along the cheekbone, the one just below the left ear, the one just above the collarbone, and many, many more.

 

Jensen let his hands comb through the other man's hair, down from his neck over the human's shoulders, and finally, down his sides to come to rest on his hips.

 

First time Jensen had ever seen a human kiss another human had been in the underworld. Despite the shock of dying and the long way the souls had to wander into the underworld and toward the bridge, some souls never lost each other. Sometimes, the souls arrived together, holding hands while they walked beside each other, and some had even kissed each other for a last time before stepping onto the golden bridge. It had looked funny, especially to a young dragon, but now he totally understood the sense of it.

 

 

And the touching? Nothing against the whole touching of skin on skin, or lips on skin, or anything else... it had looked hilarious on the couples he'd spied on in the fields, but gods, he needed more.

 

The dragon went with his new instincts and what he had seen, and it seemed to working well enough.

 

He pushed Tristan's pants down clumsily, cataloging the naked skin with his palms, subconsciously pushing upwards with his hips to feel more. And that kind of pressure put against his hips, really, felt even better than the kissing and anything else had.

 

“Jen...” Tristan gasped.

 

Jensen pushed his hips up against the smith's another time, finding the friction he encountered not nearly enough to have more of the pleasure. Before he even knew what exactly he was doing – which happened a lot since he was human – he pushed the man around and pulled on his own trousers.

 

Too much clothes, too much skin covered up...

 

As finally, the clothes were off and thrown around the room without any care where they would land, it looked much better.

 

Sprawled out like that, there was in fact a lot more of the smith to look at than Jensen had ever before had the joy to see, and he couldn't say he disliked what he was seeing. He touched and licked and kissed every inch of skin he could reach, exploring new territory – which sounded really stupid in his head when he thought about it, but was quite the best part of being human he had discovered, yet.

 

Lately, he seemed to need to update his list of new things by the minute.

 

Jensen pressed his lips to a spot close to Tristan's navel, a touch with just the promise of tongue, and trailed down along the hair toward his cock. He didn't touch, not even really came close, and it was driving the smith nuts already.

 

Tristan's hips jerked toward Jensen's face, trying to come just that little bit closer to the warmth of his mouth, but the bastard of a dragon just stayed out of reach.

 

A few drops of liquid collected at the tip of the smith's cock, slowly rolling down the slit and onto his stomach. Jensen reached out and slowly dragged a finger through the trail created and toward the tip.

 

The reaction at the touch was instant and surprising.

 

“Stop it,” Tristan moaned hoarsely.

 

Jensen, instead of stopping, repeated the action, but this time he kept going, trailing the finger down along the vein pulsing on the side of the shaft, down to the hair curling at the base and even further into new territory. And without further warning he leaned down and followed his finger with the tip of his tongue.

 

“Stop it,” the smith moaned more urgently. “Stop it.. I..”

 

If Jensen would go on like this, Tristan wasn't going to hold on for much longer. Jensen, of course, wasn't about to stop, the smug grin he had on his face while teasing Tristan was enough evidence for it.

 

“Jen,” Tristan playfully growled. “I said, stop it!”

 

In a sudden move, that Tristan had learned in countless struggles with his brothers, he was on top again, pinning the dragon down with his body and a heated deep kiss. In this position their cocks were lined up against each other, the friction and pressure enough to drive the dragon crazy with the weight alone, but then the smith moved. He rolled his hips forward slowly, again and again, and swallowed Jensen's moans down greedily.

 

The dragon pulled one leg up to get more, hooking it as good he could around Tristan's thigh.

 

“Don't stop,” he panted. “Don't stop.”

 

And Tristan didn't.

 

They felt like the only two people in the world, but that impression was just a illusion of two pleasure drugged minds.

 

Down on the floor, in a dark corner by the stairs, a mouse sat, her nose twitching and her little eyes glowing faintly red. She moved impatiently from tiny paw to tiny paw, wrinkling up her face into a impatient grimace.

 

This whole thing was taking too long.

 

:::

 

The village of Hallinga, the village of ship builders and fishermen,

clustered around a small bay. A natural wall of rocks and hills surrounded the wooden homesteads to three sides and sheltered them from storms as well as from unwanted visitors.

 

Unfinished ships rested on shore by a line of workshop sheds and large trading vessels rocked on the soft waves alongside smaller fisher boats. The only way through for riders and goods was through a narrow valley, easy to defend through archers from above and blocked by a natural arch of rock, perfect for a door.

 

The location was perfect for a village.

 

The night was quiet and cool. A soft breeze blew in from the ocean and pushed the smoke of the workshop fires from the beach towards the houses and barns, the ships bobbed up and down, their sails folded up and secured, their sailors at home with their wives and children.

 

It was peaceful and the guards oblivious to the giant golden shapes drawing closer on the night sky.

 

They were angry and out for revenge, dragons born from the woods of Yaggdrasil, the world tree, coming to find their youngest brother, but of course the villagers of Hallinga couldn't know that.

 

That the wind ceased was all the warning they got.

 

They had no idea why the largest of the the dragons banked left and came downwards in a wide curve along the beach line, spitting a liquid fire that set flame to the three largest ships at the pier, the fisher boats, the guards, the fish and the village. His brothers tore out of the sky and through the town leaving nothing but ashes.

 

Where is our brother, they howled, but there was no answer.

 

People screamed, tried to run, tried to fight, but the door was blocked and flames closing in on them, consuming their flesh and their souls in their heat. These people would not cross the bridge, the guards would not let them. Hel would not welcome them, the doors of Walhalla would remain closed for the warriors falling in battle against the Gods' children.

:::


	9. Chapter 9

The morning came far too early. The first voices talking too loud woke him from one of the best sleeps he had slept in what felt like ten years. He sighed contently and turned over in his bed, determined to sleep just a little bit longer, even with the market screamers outside and the lumpy bed. Gods had he missed his bed.

“I think it's time to get up,” Jensen muttered from behind him.

Tristan's eyes instantly flew wide open and in his hurry to turn around, he fell out of bed in a heap of flailing limbs. Jensen laughed loud and leaned over the side of the bed, looking down at the other man. Tristan's head had hit the wood floor hard and throbbed dully, but somehow the sight of the obviously amused dragon made it better. Well, if he ignored the gloating, and the fact that it might not have been the best idea to forget to clean up the sticky remains of last night's activities. The semen and salvia had dried over night and glued part of his anatomy to his thigh in a really pretty uncomfortable way which felt even more uncomfortable now that his fall had cost him some hair.

“Not funny,” he grumbled and struggled to sit up.

“You're an uncoordinated human klutz, you know,” Jensen chuckled.

Tristan combed a hand through his hair as soon as he sat up and glared at the other man. “And you are a unbearably smug dragon,” he muttered.

Jensen leaned forward and closed the distance between them easily, pressing a closed lipped kiss on Tristan's lips.

“You're just pissed because you fell out of bed and hit your pretty head,” Jensen whispered and planted another soft kiss on Tristan's cheek, another one below an eye. “Let me make it up to you.”

“God,” Tristan moaned as Jensen crawled off the bed and right on top of him. Jensen peppered Tristan's throat and chest with soft closed lipped kisses, taking his sweet time with every and each inch of skin. The sneaky dragon trailed his hand down Tristan's side and came to rest on his slowly hardening cock.

“Not a God,” Jensen said teasingly. “Just a dragon.”

“Boys!” Beaver yelled from down the stairs and made them jump. “You've got to meet with the bronze dealers, you fools, you forgotten that? Come down already, or do I need to get up there and get your lazy asses out of bed.”

Tristan huffed, knocking his aching head back against the floor.

“I heard you, we're coming,” he yelled while the dragon snickered and crawled off his lover.

“Later,” Jensen promised and winked – they were saying that word way to often - then started to get into the clothes he had discarded in the night before. About an hour later they were out and on the way to meet the bronze dealers at the crossroads beyond the hills, the dogs hot on their heels. 

~+~

Hallinga's smiths were expected to arrive late that afternoon, but never came. Instead of their ship a small fire blackened fisher boat with women and children sailed in over the waves. Beaver saw it first, sitting alongside Morgan by the side of the half finished ship watching the fire. There were maybe ten or fifteen refuges, face pale under the ash covering them and their eyes frozen in horror. Two old fishermen had been out late the night of the attack, they told them, had taken in who had tried to jump into the water and got away from the attack that way before the entire village was burned down.

“What attacked you,” Morgan asked, helping a crying woman off the boat. Other hunters and workers had swarmed in to help pull the ship ashore, help get the people off.

The woman couldn't speak, just whimpered. One of the old fishers, a thin man with a face marked up by sun and age, though, found the words, shaking his head.

“Dragons.” He closed his eyes. “Dragons. Golden as the sun, gigantic golden dragons.”

The other fisher nodded weakly. “They search for their brother, we could hear them scream for him.”

“They wont stop until they find him.”

Morgan shuddered. One Gold neck had been enough to kill men, injure half his crew, destroy their ship, more than one could end a whole village, could end a whole world if the gods wanted them to.

He looked out over the ocean as the guards on their towers sounded their horns summoning the hunters for war. Clouds hung low at the horizon, dark and promising something very bad to come. He looked back at the women and children, at the village and the houses sitting up on the cliff beyond the water, and knew, just knew, it would need a miracle by the hands of the gods to get any of them out alive.

He looked at Beaver, a brother in arms, and nodded.

“Get the gear,” Morgan said. 

~+~

The bronze was loaded up on the horse backs, and they covered the way back faster than expected. Joking, bantering, and maybe occasionally stopping at the side of the road for a break that not just involved eating but continued where Jensen had left Tristan hanging in the morning.

Dragons, Tristan had learned, and especially those driven by a more than inhuman curiosity, were eager to try new things once they discovered something fun, not that he was complaining.

Jensen was the most curios of all.

“Don't day dream,” Jensen warned. “You will fall of the horse.”

Tristan chuckled. “Not day dreaming.”

He wasn't, he had all he wanted in the waking world, no need to dream. The dogs run ahead, their tongues lolling from the chase around their horses. They noted it first.

They took off towards the slope down the road and skidded to a halt in the gravel, barking and yowling, their tails between their legs. Tristan shared a confused look with Jensen and closed up to his dogs, staring in shock.

Trails of black smoke curled into the sky at the horizon like the tentacle arms of something large and very deadly. Their horses suddenly shied at a distant roar coming from the direction of the smoke, the direction of Tristan's village. There was something golden and impossibly large cutting through one of the tendrils curling in the sky, banking hard to the left and falling to the ground a wave of fire ahead of him.

“No,” Jensen whispered. “No, no, not like that...”

Tristan's horse reared up and he had to hold on for dear life as it moved. He never had been that much or a rider, but for a reason he did not know, probably luck, he stayed in the saddle this time around, head pressed towards the neck of his horse whispering again and again like he would have with one of the sick mares in his stable. Those that carried the bronze behind them couldn't be held back and were tugging and pulling on their leashes until Tristan had no other choice but to let them go.

“You have to wish me back into a dragon,” Jensen yelled over the wild nickering of the horses, holding to his own riding animal.

Tristan nearly fell off shocked by the wish. “What?”

“My brothers will destroy your village, they will kill every single man, woman and child, and not one of them will be allowed across the bridge until they tell them where I am!” Jensen reigned his horse in, face hot and red. “You've got to wish me dragon again, so I can stop them.”

“But I can't,” Tristan babbled almost sheepishly.

Jensen's growl was worthy his true nature. “Why the hel not!?”

“The twig is back at home in a safe spot, I told you,” Tristan admit and Jensen rolled his eyes. Of course it was.

“Go!” Jensen pushed his horse forward with a press of his thighs. Tristan had his trouble to direct his horse then followed. 

~+~

The dragons attacked from two sides. The two slightly smaller creatures came from the sea, one burned the new ship's parts and the docks with its fire while the other threw his weight into the guard towers high on the cliff, ripping one down with his bare claws and torching the other one with his fire.

The women and children where screaming and running away from the flames toward the caves in the cliff side, and most of the guards and hunters tried to stand their ground, but this was what the larger dragon waited for. He dropped out of the sky like the fury of Thor himself and cut through the hunters' lines, shrugging off the arrows like rain drops.

Mary ran as fast as she possibly could, dragging two smaller children with her by their arms and ushering a group of women on toward the caves.

Houses went up in flames around them the instant the dragon's fire hit the wooden roofs, people screamed, and arrows sailed on over the the people's heads shrugged off of the gigantic dragon's wings like they didn't mean anything to it.

She hadn't thought much about the day as her father and her Kingdom had fallen, but the chaos around her, especially the screams, brought all back with a vengeance.

Horses, and other livestock, run scared and wild amongst the people, running over men and young boys that tried to stop their stampede.

This, in a way, was by far worse than what she had seen the Bishop do as he had been host to the demon. Christ, this was like what she had imagined hell to be, made of fire, sulfur and blood.

The smoke burned in her eyes and her ears rung from the screaming creatures laying waste to her village, but she remained, searching around to see if other women and children still needed to be guided out of the fire.

There was nobody left, but in the clouds of smoke and embers dancing in the wind, she could see small mice hurry through the ashes. Not just running away from the fire, but straight into it. And before she could even wonder what had gotten into the animals to kill themselves in the flames, she saw the one with the spot.

“JENSEN!” Someone yelled, and she looked up.

And although ashes and smoke and the heat of the fire made her sight bad at best, she knew it was her son she saw all but falling off a shying horse and running straight into the inferno after his friend.

After the mouse.

The deal, she remembered, suddenly almost dizzy from the guilt and fear, Jesus.

“Come back!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Tristan!”

She pushed the children on into the right direction than turned back and went after her son, she would not lose him like this.

~+~

Jensen jumped off his horse and covered the rest of the distance towards the house running. The twins, his siblings, were taking out the riders and hunters attacking, and the larger one of his brothers was taking apart each house with his claws, doing more or less what Jensen had asked them to: searching for him, rescuing him.

He had never wanted it to be like this, never.

Alright, maybe in the beginning he had wanted the hunters to suffer the way they had made him suffer, and he had asked the dog to tell his brothers what exactly had happened to him. But now? Now, Jensen knew that not all human hunters were evil, he had looked into their ways, had seen the other side, had fucking fallen in love with one.

He tried to scream at them, tried to make his presence known and stop his brothers from taking apart the Viking village, but he was just a small human and his voice a whisper in compare to the eardrum shattering roar of his oldest and largest brother.

Tristan stumbled over a upturned bench behind him, and he pulled him up and forward by a hand full of his traveling coat.

“We have to get out of here,” Tristan yelled at him, holding on to him as he was dragged further into the debris.

“You need to wish me back,” Jensen growled. “You need to be close to it, you said that, so we go there.”

Tristan spluttered. “But...”

Beaver was gone as they reached the workshop, probably rescued by Morgan or someone else, the horses were gone too and the stable doors stood wide open. The workshop fire had started to spread out of it's stone pit.

Tristan crawled up the stairs on all fours, holding part of his coat before his mouth. It took a few minutes but he found the small box, searching blindly and aimlessly. The world grayed in on the corners of his eyes and he coughed hard. Tristan got woozy and the longer he tried to find the box and the twig the clumsier his movements went, and if not for Jensen all but dragging him down the stairs again and into the open, he probably wouldn't have come out of it alive at all.

Outside, Jensen's brother roared and the earth shook from his voice and power.

They fell both to their knees holding on to each other on the ash covered ground, fire and crumbling buildings all around them. It was an anti-climatic moment of clarity for both.

The dragons above, the fire around them, the smoke making the air thick and acidic, and somewhere beyond that the clear sky high above them, and all that just because of them.

“Do it Tristan,” Jensen whispered.

Tristan grabbed the twig and held it tight in his fist, closed his eyes and wished for Jensen to turn back. He didn't want to let him go, not after the last weeks, or the last nights.

He had no other choice, though.

Jensen screamed hoarsely and as Tristan opened his eyes to look what was going on, his body had already started to stretch and grow. His pale freckled skin turned bronze and golden, his bones grew and he raised high above Tristan's head. The dragon shook himself as the change had completed, spreading his wings. He ducked his head down towards Tristan a last time, his eyes dark and sad.

This was goodbye, both knew it.

And that, Tristan figured, was how it ended.

Jensen leaped into the sky, his strong large wings creating a ash storm around Tristan as he went higher and higher. He melted into the smoke and was gone within just a few seconds.

Tristan remained, alone and aching already from the way this whole mess had gone down. Still, at the same time, he regretted nothing, not one hour.

It had been the best time of his life.

Tristan sat there in the ash and watched the houses burn around him. The smoke was blown away by the breeze coming from the ocean and all sound of the world around him was narrowed down to the buzz of flames consuming wood and his heartbeat.

Jensen was gone with his brothers, back to the world of the dead and the bridge into the underworld. Tristan's village was in ruins and he had no idea about the villagers.

He had no wish left and couldn't help. He ached too much anyway to do anything right now. Besides, with the flames consuming all the houses at the same time, there was no way to get it back under control anyway.

Who had not gotten out until now, wouldn't.

Tristan looked down to the ground and then around. For a moment he wished that the fire would consume him too, then he would walk across the bridge and see Jensen again. On the other hand, he didn't want to die. Not yet. He still had to look out for Beaver and the horses, and his mother...

He closed his eyes and hung his head.

One day he would see Jensen again, maybe sooner than later, but he would wait at the other side, he knew it.

“Well, well,” the mouse pipped up. “Haven't you grown big.”

Probably a lot sooner than he expected. 

~+~


	10. Chapter 10

Tristan opened his eyes and there, in the ash, sat the spotted mouse. She looked as if she was smiling a little mouse smile and her nose twitched in what he believed to be either amusement or anticipation.

Maybe both.

And, much to Tristan's displeasure, she was not alone: about two dozen mice crawled out between the chaos all around, circling him.

“You will be a tasty meal for my family,” she continued and sat back up on her hind legs.

More mice joined in and Tristan stood up shakily to get some space in between his face and the mice.

“What do you want?”

“Well,” the mouse said slowly. “We had a deal, didn't we? You said I can have your body for my family. I gave you the wishes, you used the wishes. We come to feast now that you are big.”

It felt like a joke someone had played on him.

“You want to eat me now?”

“Yes.” The mouse said patiently as if to a child, and hopped forward another few inches.

“I mean, ten years are long enough, you really took your time with the wishes, really, but at least you are a big man now.”

Tristan involuntarily backed away from the mice approaching, looking at their twitching noses and their beady black eyes. More came from within the fire, appearing unharmed out of red glowing embers. Now, they would climb him, would throw him down, would start swarming all over him and eat him, tiny bit by tiny bit.

“Wait...” he cried as the first two or three creatures tried to approach to climb his leg. He shook his limb and the mice flew off loudly squeaking, landing in the debris unharmed.

“Stop,” it suddenly called from somewhere behind them, and the mice froze in their spots.

“Stop, that was not the deal! Stop!”

“Mother?” Tristan yelled in surprise about her appearance. Her blond hair were dirty with ashes and her clothes caked with dirt.

“Och, you too?” The mouse rolled her eyes, or at least the creature tried to do the mouse equivalent to an annoyed eye rolling.

“Not the deal, not the deal, all always say it was not the deal,” the mouse said and shook Herself.

“But let me tell you something: it was.”

Mary stepped slowly towards her son, closer and closer, and the lines of mice parted for her. She held her hands out reaching for her son, her eyes flickering anxiously from the mice to her youngest child and back.

“It's alright Tristan, don't be afraid,” she said soothingly, then turned toward the spotted mouse.

“You said he had a chance!”

“And I gave him a chance.” The spotted mouse nodded her head to herself. “He had enough wishes to undo this deal, plenty of time.”

Mary finally reached her son and wrapped her arms around him in a protective embrace that looked a little awkward with their height difference. She smiled at him, sorry and sad, as the mouse went on.

“What deal,” Tristan asked looking from his mother to the mouse and back.

“Your Mother made a deal with me, she wanted children, she got children. The youngest was meant to be mine, but I agreed that he could save himself if he wanted to, now, you didn't,” the mouse explained, getting back on two hind legs and waving a paw at him.

“Deal is a deal,”

“I didn't even know...” Tristan started in confusion. “I didn't even know what to do with the damn wishes!”

The mouse waved a paw dismissively. “Telling you that was not part of that deal, and neither of ours.”

Mary's eyes went wide and frightened as she looked at her son. “You made a deal as well?”

“I...”

“He did.” The mouse nodded. “We helped him survive, he allowed us to devour him. I even gave him the wishes then, he could have wished himself free at any time, but he didn't.”

“Take me instead.” Mary stepped before her son, in between him and the mice.

“Mother!”

“This is alright son,” she whispered just loud enough for him, holding him behind her as good she could. “It was my fault, my curse, my family's burden, and never meant to harm you.”

The spotted mouse's nose twitched almost disdainfully.

“You are too thin, no meat there. Besides, you had your chance.”

She turned to Tristan, sighing dreamily.

“But your boy, my has he grown. And he truly inherited your father's stature too, if you ask me. All broad shoulders and kingly posture...” she said and the mouse's almost cute face turned into a awful caricature of what once might have been an animal, snarling in amusement up at them both.

Mary couldn't believe it... the mark on the neck of the bishop, the dark spot, the mouse...

“You...” she whispered and held on tighter to her son. “It was you all this time?”

The mouse shrugged.

“I always get what I want in the end.”

The eyes of the mouse turned red and glowed bright, as did those of all the other mice around them. A thousand little red dots in the smoke and ashes all around them watched them both now, some of them belonging to what seemed to be the very same hounds she had seen on her father's court back in the day.

“We will devour your flesh, then take your souls,” the mouse hummed. “My my, will he taste good.”

And then, they pounced.

:::

There were just a few things about Dragons, even they didn't know about themselves. For instance, despite being born through an act of blood and meant to rip apart the souls not allowed to go on at all, deep down a dragon soul was always kind.

Another thing was, that if they fell in love, they gave away their hearts just as every other being, just that little bit more literally.

It made them just as fragile as a human in a way, and they tied themselves to the people they fell in love with just as much as a human did. That was probably from where the saying came that the heart of a gold neck could bring immortality. Myths, really, but in a way, that saying was also true.

With a Gold neck loving you, neither gods nor demons could touch you, nobody really could. There had only ever been one case in the past, and that story was so old it even was but a myth for the dragons themselves.

Jensen had thrown himself at his eldest brother with all his might, tackling him and throwing him out of the sky. They twisted and turned in a knot of wings and tails and limbs, falling in a high arch over the side of the cliff and landing with a large splash in the water.

His brother bit him, tried to take him by the scruff of his neck like a god damn pup. Jensen though, twisted away, using his smaller size to get out of his brother's range and zipped away back to the surface.

“STOP IT!” he roared over the explosion of salt water as his brother followed. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!”

His brother roared at him, cutting through the smoke like a flash of lighting to follow his youngest brother into the sky.

'stop the attack!' Jensen all but screamed at him in their own language. 'Don't attack!'

'They're hunters,' he hissed. 'They're dead meat!'

His brother threw his weight against Jensen, knocking him nearly out of the sky and to the ground again.

'They have their faults, but not all of them are bad,' he argued back, banking away from his brother.

His older brother had no real respect for the nonsense Jensen was talking, and anyway, from where had the kid come, where had these disgusting human hunters kept him prisoner?

He smelled of human, felt like human, even thought of himself by a human name.

It was disgusting.

Jensen put himself in between the burning village, much to the surprise of the audience of scared hunters on the ground, and the dragons. He spread his wings wide, building a living golden wall between his siblings and the villagers, and nobody understood why.

It had a impact on his oldest brother, and he halted in confusion, hoovering over the clouds of smoke coming from the shore where the dock and all the remaining ships now were on fire.

Elder Brother couldn't understand the actions of his youngest sibling.

'You'll return to our mistress' elder brother snarled, the two others joining their wild chase in the sky. 'She'll decide.'

Jensen could do that.

'Yes, yes, just stop the attack!'

'She'll punish you,' big brother spat.

He roared and raised higher with a few beats of his mighty wings, then banked away to the left, expecting Jensen and the others to follow. Jensen's two other siblings instantly fell into line behind big brother, leaving the burning village behind, Jensen however, flew a last curve to take a last look at the confused villagers and their burning homes before he followed.

He had to follow, even if he didn't want to.

He was a dragon again now. This was for Tristan's good as much as for every other villager in town – even if they were cruel sometimes, and unfair, and bad – they didn't all deserve death.

He closed his eyes, looking away, and turned away from the world of the humans. Sooner or later he would see Tristan again, in a way, and then, maybe if the God's were merciful, he'll stay with him a little longer.

His heart ached terribly at the thought that his lover would have to die first for this. Jared's presence was like a hook cutting through his scaled armor and into the muscle of his flanks, anchoring right deep into his heart to connect them forever. He cherished the feel of connection, at least having that much, before someone tugged on it mercilessly as if to rip out the dragon's heart.

The incorporeal pull kept on tugging, got worse and worse by the second, it felt like actual pain, actual fear, actual flesh tearing into shreds – just not his own.

He opened his eyes, the green glowing bright in sudden rage, and turned around as fast as he possibly could.

:::

The mouse laughed inhumanly loud as the first creatures attacked. The large red eyed beasts were not more than ash caked shadows as they pounced, large and impossibly heavy as one hit Tristan in the side. He fell and before he even knew what was done to him, something sunk teeth into his lower leg and pulled him away from his mother.

His mother screamed as she found her son torn from her hands by the shadow, and fell to the dirty ground hard as another beast grabbed her by her dress and coat. The thing pulled her by the shreds of her clothing toward one of the burning buildings and into the piles of excited red eyed mice. She kicked and screamed and tried to push away the creatures with her bare fists, but it had embarrassingly little impact on her attackers.

Tristan, at the same time, tried to kick the beast in the head to get it to let go, while dozens of mice did their best to climb all over him.

So, it would be sooner than later then, he though despite himself, and kicked another time. The mice tore on his clothes, tried to reach his skin and bite him, scratching with their tiny claws and hissing like snakes while doing so. He tried his best to reach a still smoldering log of wood just out of reach of his fingers, thought it would maybe help to get the thing to stop holding him in place, and as he heard his mother scream loud and desperate, he finally closed the distance fueled by the need to help her.

He beat the beast that held him in its fangs over the side of its head, hitting what he thought might be the ear and part of the eye, and repeated the hit once more as it finally let go.

The temporary disorientation of the beast only left him enough time to shake off a few of the mice and get up somehow, and although his leg hurt like something had been most definitely torn or broken, he even managed to cover half the distance to his mother before the angry hound pounced him again from behind.

The weight of the hound and the impact had knocked all air out of him, and the screams of his mother still made him scramble to get up again and do something about it, somehow. He didn't get up though, couldn't do more than uselessly wave his arms to shake off the mice.

The beast breathed hot sulfur into his neck, growling in anticipation of the kill, it's master jumping up and down not far away in glee over the well done deed, and for a long moment Tristan through that this was it, his last moment before death.

The killing move, though, never really came.

The growl of the beast and the squeaks of glee of the mouse were overwhelmed by the rage filled roar of a dragon, loud enough to make Tristan's ears ring painfully.

For a second the smoke was blown away and the ash swirled up into the air, and then something golden landed on the remains of a house, splintering the wood for good. The landing was a small earthshaking explosion all on it's own that drew all attention away from the pray and onto the creature.

In the next moment the hound wailed and flew through the air.

Tristan barely dared to look up as the Dragon first made short process of the hound, then tugged the other one off Tristan's still fighting mother. The dead beast fell in pieces to the ashen ground not far away from where the spotted mouse still sat, and the mice, obviously scared, hurriedly scurried away into the shadows from where they had come.

Tristan didn't much care, he tried anew to get on his feet and close the distance to his mother, finally taking her into his arms as he reached her. She was barely alive, a dozen or more bites peppering her face and neck, and her hands looked even worse. There was impossibly much blood all over her, seeping through the shreds of her clothes onto Jared's skin.

“Tristan,” she weakly asked.

“I'm here, I'm fine, we're fine now,” he assured her, and finally looked up.

He stared directly at the gigantic Gold-neck that had come to his rescue. His wings were fanned out wide, his talons buried deep in the burning beams of a house's debris, and his dangerous mouth was pulled into a threatening snarl directed at the mouse.

“Jensen...?”

The glowing eyes fixed in on Tristan for a second, then focused back on the mouse on the ground. She was angry, alright, downright fuming with rage, but the dragon was as well.

“How dare you! Filthy beast!” she yelled, eyes glowing like fire.

Jensen hissed, drawing his slender neck back. He moved his body sideways, just enough to lower a wing to effectively cover Tristan's position from fire and anything else, before he stretched his neck forward once more to reach the mouse's position.

It was as much a gesture of protection and love, as a clear sign of what the mouse and the creature within had dared to fool around with.

“This,” she hissed. “Is not how it is supposed to go.”

Jensen seemed barely impressed and let a cloud of smoke curl from his nostrils. The mouse took this for the threat it was: don't mess with what is mine.

The little body of the spotted mouse twisted up suddenly and twitched as if she was suffering from terrible cramps. She squeaked shrilly then black smoke started to waft from her small crooked body. It lifted up into the air and left a mouse without a spot on her pelt behind in the dirt, dead and bleeding from its eyes and mouth. The black cloud hissed and crackled, tiny bolts of lightning zapping up it's sides a few times.

All Tristan saw of what happened next was the blinding light of dragon fire, incinerating the black cloud to a faint could of black sand before it could take off for good into the sky.

The sounds of the world seemed numbed to a background hiss in the aftermath, at least for Tristan's ringing ears. Jensen nodded to himself, convincing himself with a sniff of the work he had done, before he shifted the wing away from Tristan and his mother. He folded the wings up on his back and moved his body so he could be a wall between the humans and the fire and see Tristan at the same time, then he lowered his head.

“You alright?” he softly spoke.

Tristan nodded, he was, his mother wasn't. She was bleeding from many wounds and smelled, for the dragon at least, as if death was fast approaching her. Jensen could smell her soul getting ready to leave the body behind, feel how her pain slowly disappeared, replaced by the lightness of the bodiless.

“She's dying.”

Mary opened her eyes as she heard the grumbling words of the dragon, looking up at his head and his kind eyes, then at her mostly unhurt son. She smiled.

“The demon is gone,” she said full with relief.

Tristan nodded, tears running down his face.

“Yes, it is.” Jensen said in his stead.

“Good.” She smiled weakly. “That's very good.”

Tristan knew that she was gone a moment later, even without having the dragon's ability to see souls departing. He didn't need that to understand when the body turned to nothing but a husk. Jensen raised his head, eying the new soul standing off to the side from the corner of his eyes.

She looked on sorrowfully, even guilty, but she didn't need to be. Jensen knew just by the smell when a soul would cross the bridge and find eternal peace on the other side instead of the fire of his brothers or punishment. She, even with all her faults, was destined for something beautiful.

There were more souls around, some aimlessly wandering through the fire, not yet aware where they had to go, others already taken away for their heroism in death by the female servants of Odin and Thor.

Tristan watched him, still holding on to his mother.

“And now?”

Jensen looked back down to him. There was no sense in denial, he did not want to leave but this, all the souls, was also his world. He had to leave before his brothers came back, nothing had changed.

“Nothing has changed,” he whispered. “I need to go, before my brothers come back.”

Tristan nodded slowly.

“I know.”

“I'll bring your mother to a good place,” the dragon promised.

He leaned down again, touching his snout to the side of Tristan's head in a gesture of goodbye, before he moved away and took off back to the sky, a few dozen souls in his wake. Tristan was almost sure he could see them through the smoke and ashes, but maybe his sight was just blurry from his stupid tears.

He stared after Jensen for a very long time, or at least for as long as his brothers needed to find him and his mother in the still burning village and pull him out. Nobody said a word about what had happened, or about the dragon actually protecting their settlement.

That was the last time Tristan saw or heard anything of his dragon for a long, long time.

In fact, it was the last time any of the hunter tribes ever saw a Gold-neck, or any kind of other dragon, anywhere on their homeland again - much to the King's displeasure.

The King of the north died the next year from too much wine and too much feasting, fat and sick, and most likely poisoned by whatever measures he had taken to prolong his life.

There might have been a earth dragon about a year later, Tristan's village had sent out a small group to investigate, but it had turned out to be nothing but an extreme large kind of saurian.

Still, they didn't kill it.

Over the years the world changed, and soon Dragons turned into memory, consumed by the new religion coming from the south, and in the end damned to be nothing but a legend.

A beast in fairytale and myth, the corporeal manifestation of the devil in the bible, nothing more than something to spook children with.

The legend of a Gold neck's heart granting immortality was forgotten, right along with the story about the Smith and the dragon he fell in love with – not that many actually knew about that story to begin with.

People forgot the truth about the hunting tribes of the north, about dragons and curses and deals, and about what hunted in the nights when they peacefully slept in their houses.

All but a few.

:::


	11. EPILOGUE OR THE REAL END

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you don't want the end to be the end.

:::

 

Beaver had gotten a bad cough early in spring, and for a while it had looked as if Tristan's old Master would start on the long walk to the underworld sooner than anyone had expected.

The time was hard for Tristan, but at the same time, he knew that his friend would be in good hands once he would leave the world of the living for good. That comforted him somewhat, if not that much.

It needed nearly a month before the old man finally became better again, but the young smith remained cautious of his state and checked at least twice a night even after most of the coughing had stopped. He was like that, caring and all, and that would probably never change.

Tristan tucked the woolen blanket up, making sure Beaver would not freeze while sleeping and put some more wood on the fire. It was raining outside, and still chilly around this time of the year.

He continued with his nightly round and crossed the workshop to enter the stables. The dogs lifted their heads and wagged their tails for him, but obviously felt to comfortable on their spots in the hay to get up and investigate what he was doing.

Tristan wasn't doing anything interesting anyway, just looking for a horse with a infected leg that had come in a few days ago, and that had yet to get better. He had applied what medicine he had, but sometimes he just couldn't help, no matter how much he wanted.

The least he could do was not leaving the being alone in these times then. He had come to understand that Jensen would have an eye on the people on the other side, and all Jared could do was doing the same on his side. It was as much connection as they possibly could have. Now, that the horse was so close to death, this foreign connection was even stronger than it had ever been in the last years.

“I know you hurt,” he whispered, reaching out with one hand to stroke the side of the horse's neck. It was not helping, but maybe it was comfort to have a friendly touch. “I know it's bad, I know, and I'm sorry.”

The horse shook his head, his eyes already clouded over by the infection spreading. Maybe he would hold on until the sun came up, or maybe last another day, Tristan didn't know. Maybe he would ask one of the archers to make it short, Tristan pondered, or maybe Beaver could – he was still a quick killer if he had to.

“It's going to be better soon,” he promised and gave as much comfort as he could.

Thunder boomed through the night sky above and the horse nervously moved in the box, flaring its nostrils from the tension in the air.

Tristan leaned on top of the box door and left his hand on the horses neck, softly talking nonsense to the horse. He wouldn't understand, but the frequency of the voice was calming the animal down slowly, and that would help at least a little with the pain.

Tristan jerked out of his trance like state as one of his dogs nudged him with its nose, wagging it's tail wildly and lolling it's tongue. The other dog stood at the door of the stables, giddily moving from leg to leg, as if in anticipation of a well known visitor.

“What's up boys?”

The second dog, once sure of his Master's attention trotted over to the door as well, waiting.

He slowly walked over to the two.

“Someone coming?”

Geri woofed in reply, getting up on his hind legs to scratch on the door. He wanted out, wanted to welcome someone he liked, or maybe there was just a bitch in heat out there, who knew.

“It's late boys,” Tristan said. “Calm down and go back to your spots, go on.”

Geri didn't listen, too excited, and turned even wilder as it knocked.

Tristan stood there frozen for a long moment, then it knocked again and year long experience kicked in. Many people had brought by their horses in the nights before, some late because of bad weather or the distance they had to cover.

He opened the stable door, but instead of a wet horse and a probably sour client, Tristan merely found a man wrapped in a totally soaked through blanket – and not much else.

The dogs were way faster with understanding who it was, jumping for joy and going crazy in the attempt to communicate their utter adoration and love.

Tristan needed just that little bit longer.

Jensen sighed and adjusted his blanket a little, he looked like a wet dog, his hair hanging in his face and rain still soaking him further. No idea where he had gotten that blanket from, for Tristan it looked like a piece of old sail, but all that wasn't really important.

“Do I have to stand out here for the rest of the night, or will you let me in?”

He was back.

“Jensen?”

The dragon laughed as he got wrapped up in his overeager smith's arms, the dogs running circles around the their legs in excitement.

Tristan didn't dare to ask what had brought his dragon back, and Jensen wasn't about to tell, but with a little luck, they got their happily ever after, at least for a while.

No need to ask how or why.

And with the Gods' good will, maybe they even got to walk the path to the underworld together, across the golden bridge, under the watchful eyes of the remaining Gold-necks in existence toward immortality. Maybe then they would fly together like in Jared's dreams.

Welcome to Hel's world.

And maybe some day, someone would come up with a story very much sounding like the forgotten myth of the Viking son who rather wanted to be a smith than a hunter, and his dragon who turned into a human out of accident and fell in love with the smith. And maybe that story would then end with a happily ever after...

Who knows.

:::

The gods can be cruel with their creation, heartless and cold. But in myth they all just find themselves slaves to the same feelings as humans or beasts: devotion, hate, rage, need, lust, friendships... even love, and in a way, they yearn for it just as much as we do.

The precious feeling had always ranked high as a motivation for their actions – cruelty as well as kindness - and even if Hel is a daughter of deceit, death and trickery, she feels, and even as she's half dead and twisted, she is yearning for company just as much as anyone else.

She is half a human, after all.

And maybe, deep down and despite all the coldness in her world of the dead, she can see when someone else yearns as much as she does, and can be kind for a change.

It's not as if she wouldn't see him again, sooner or later, and time really didn't matter. The oldest Dragon is not convinced it is a good idea, but Hel is the queen of his kin, the Lady of the underworld, and he has to follow orders.

So he big brother has to watch how Hel let's her youngest guard go.

:::

The end


End file.
